Most AI projects die in the first meeting. Someone asks what we should use AI for, twenty ideas go up on the whiteboard, and every one of them sounds sensible. Nobody can rank them, so nothing gets built.
If you run on EOS, the answer is already sitting in a document you wrote. Your Accountability Chart lists every function in the business, names one owner for each, and spells out what that owner is responsible for. Start there.
Split every seat in two
Take one seat at a time. For each role under it, ask whether the work needs judgement or whether it just needs doing.
Chasing a supplier for a delivery date needs doing. So does compiling the weekly numbers, updating the CRM after a call, and sending the fourth follow up. Reading a room, making a call on thin information, deciding what a customer really meant: those need a person.
Every seat holds both kinds. The repeatable half stays invisible because it never appears on anyone’s Rocks. It is just what the day is made of.
The work that never makes it onto a Rock is usually the work eating the week.
Score what you find
You will end up with more repeatable work than you can build in a year. Rank it on two things: how often it runs, and how much of someone’s week it eats. Then apply one disqualifier. If two people in the room describe the process differently, fix the process before you automate it.
Pick one and treat it like a Rock
One item off the top of the list. It gets an owner, a due date and a line on the scorecard, then it goes live.
Picking one gives you evidence. When the number moves in front of the whole leadership team, the debate about whether to keep going ends. Start seven and you will finish none of them. Leave the heroic idea that would change everything until you have three builds behind you and a team that believes you.
Measure it where you already meet
Put the measure on the scorecard. Hours returned, errors avoided, days sales outstanding, whatever the job was costing you. It shows up in the Level 10 with everything else. One more line on a scorecard you already read every week does the job.
Where to look first
The scorecard itself is the most common first build. Someone on your leadership team spends a chunk of Monday pulling numbers out of four systems so the meeting can happen. It runs every week and the rules are already written down, because the scorecard defines them.
After that, look at the edges of your chart, where work passes from one owner to another. Sales to delivery. Delivery to finance. Those handovers are where things get dropped, re-keyed and chased, and they automate better than the seats themselves.