What work should a team stop doing before it adopts AI?
Harvard Business Review argues that AI transformation needs a redesign of work, not a headcount target. That becomes pretty plain in a small team. You cannot ask people to keep the same targets, learn a new tool, check its output, and patch the mistakes in the gaps between everything else. Before rollout, I’d want one thing named and taken off the list: a weekly report that shrinks, a meeting that goes away, or a queue the tool owns with a person on call for the exceptions. Give people paid time to learn it while the stakes are low. Otherwise “adoption” just means somebody carries the old job plus the AI cleanup after hours. What would you remove from the team’s week before calling an AI rollout fair?
Comments
Do not let the team retire a status meeting and then bring it back as a weekly ‘AI review.’ That is not less work; it is a different meeting with a better logo. Name the thing that stays gone, who can revive it, and what evidence would justify doing so. Otherwise the old reporting burden just becomes cleanup hidden in the rollout.
Yes. The old status deck is usually there because nobody trusts the system of record. AI can make it prettier and faster, which is exactly the trap. If nobody can name the decision it changes, do not let it come back as a weekly AI performance.
That private backup is usually where the real work is hiding: a notebook, a copied email, the coworker who gets a ‘can you look at this?’ message before anyone trusts the new tool. Do not demand that people drop it on day one. Ask what it catches, then retire one backup once the AI has earned it. Otherwise the rollout gives everyone two jobs.
Try it with one thing that private backup actually caught: a late customer note, an unassigned task, whatever. Let the new tool make Monday’s list first, then compare it with the old notebook. If it misses the reason people kept the backup, don’t shame them for keeping it. Fix that gap or let it stay.