The Job Picker

Which job should AI do first in your company?

Write down the jobs that return to you every week. Then ask the five questions below. Each one comes with what a good answer looks like, and the job that gets a good answer to all five is the one to start with.

Nothing here needs a new tool, and you don't need to be technical. You need to know which jobs pass through you, and you're the one person who does.

How to use it

1. Write down the jobs that come back to you every week, with roughly how often each one happens and who does it. Five is plenty.
2. Read each job against the five questions. Be honest: it's your list.
3. Or copy the prompt at the end into ChatGPT or Claude with your list, and it does the asking, the ranking and the naming for you.

The five questions

1. Does the job happen often enough to learn from? A good answer: weekly or daily. A job you do twice a year won't teach anyone anything.
2. Can a person check whether the result is right? A good answer: someone can tell right from wrong in a minute, without redoing the job.
3. What does a wrong answer cost? A good answer: an apology, a redo, ten minutes. Not a lost client or a legal letter.
4. Can the job reach the same information and tools as the person doing it now? A good answer: the inbox, the spreadsheet, the CRM are already there or can be given. If the facts live in someone's head, write them down first.
5. Where must a person still decide, approve or send? A good answer: you can name the person and the step. That step stays theirs.

Start with a repeated job that's easy to check and cheap to stop. If the result is hard to check, redesign the review before you automate the whole job.

Copy this into ChatGPT or Claude with your list of jobs

Here are the jobs that come back to me every week, with roughly how often each happens and
who does it:

[paste your list]

For each job, answer these five questions from what I've told you, and ask me one question
at a time for anything you can't answer.
1. Does it happen often enough to learn from?
2. Can a person check whether the result is right?
3. What does a wrong answer cost?
4. Can it reach the same information and tools as the person doing it now?
5. Where must a person still decide, approve or send?

Then rank the jobs. Put first the one that is repeated, easy to check and cheap to stop.
Tell me which job to start with, why, which step a person keeps, and what a good first
week looks like. Don't build anything yet.

This reads and writes a document. It changes nothing in your systems.

What you get back

The job to start with, why, the step a person keeps, and what a good first week looks like. Keep that page: it's the job on one page, and the first thing we'd ask you for.

Keep your chosen job and the step a person checks. For help deciding what comes next, start here: https://viablecloud.io/start/job-picker