The Empty Chair in Your Workflow

Welcome back everyone 👋

This week's Automation Playbook covers:

🪑 The empty chair in your workflow

🧩 Why this gets messy so quickly

⚙️ The six seats AI can occupy

Let's get into it 👇

I did the unthinkable for anyone that knows me.

I arrived mega early for a meeting.

A room of empty chairs.

Instead of reaching for my email I took a moment to enjoy the silence, despite my sad face.

A brief moment to think.

The empty chairs were the inspiration for today’s lesson about what I see everyday with AI implementation in scaling businesses.

So pull up a chair, grab a coffee and take 5.

I had a conversation recently that stuck with me.

A business owner told me they were using AI every day.

So I asked where it sat in the business.

Not which tool they used.

Not which prompts they liked.

Where it actually sat.

There was a pause.

Because the honest answer was nowhere.

It helped with emails and the notes.

It helped with the odd bit of admin.

But it did not own anything.

That is what got me thinking about the empty chair.

Every workflow already has seats in it.

Someone gathers the information.

Someone checks the detail.

Someone writes the update.

Someone routes the task.

Someone spots the risk.

Someone escalates the issue.

Someone decides what happens next.

In most businesses, all of those seats are still occupied by humans by default.

Not because humans are always the best fit.

Because nobody has actually redesigned the workflow.

So AI sits nearby, waiting to be asked for help.

Nugget #1: The chair is there. It's just empty.

Why this gets messy so quickly

This is where a lot of businesses trip up.

Someone sees a new tool.

Someone else hears a competitor is using it.

The team has a play around.

A few useful things happen.

Then nothing really changes.

The reports still need chasing.

The updates still sit in someone's head.

The same tasks still bounce around Slack, email, and spreadsheets.

Everyone feels like they are using AI.

But the business is still running the old way.

That is the problem.

You do not need more experiments.

You need to look at the work itself and ask:

• Where does this keep slowing down?

• What gets missed?

• What gets rewritten?

• What needs checking every single time?

• What should never be left waiting in an inbox?

Once you can see the stuck point, the role for AI becomes much clearer.

Nugget #2: AI becomes useful when it is placed inside a real bottleneck, not sprinkled across random tasks.

The six seats AI can occupy

The researcher: gathers the context before a human starts.

The drafter: prepares the first version of an email, proposal section, client update, brief, or report.

The reviewer: checks whether something is complete, consistent, on-brand, compliant, or missing key information.

The router: decides where something should go next based on content, priority, client, or risk level.

The checker: compares what happened against what should have happened and flags the gaps.

The escalation layer: spots the exceptions that shouldn't sit quietly in a dashboard or inbox.

Those are very different roles.

And that's the point.

"Use AI" is too vague.

We recently looked at a client workflow where requests were landing in the right inbox, but still needed a person to read, sort, prioritise, and decide what happened next.

That is not a dramatic problem.

But it is exactly the kind of work that slows a team down.

In that case, the useful seat was not "AI assistant".

It was router.

1. Read the request.

2. Classify it.

3. Flag anything urgent.

4. Send it to the right place.

Then let the human handle the judgement call.

That is when AI stops being a side tool and starts becoming part of how the business runs.

Nugget #3: AI doesn't need to own the whole workflow. It needs to own one clearly defined seat.

What you can do this week

Pick one workflow your team repeats every week and ask:

🔷 Where does work slow down?

🔷 What gets checked, chased, routed, or rewritten?

🔷 Could AI safely own that one seat?

Not the whole workflow.

Just one useful responsibility.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help:

• You can check out the latest episode of the Ctrl Alt Dev podcast, where I break down what's working right now in detail with my co-host Sean Sale: Apple | Spotify | YouTube

• Take our Escape the Chaos audit to learn the critical factors to scaling businesses with automation in 5 minutes.

• Need a fresh perspective? I’m here to help. Book a free audit call with me, and we’ll figure it out together.