Workflow redesign
Rethinking the steps, roles and decisions of a process around what AI makes cheap, instead of inserting AI into the existing steps. Stronger AI performers do it more often.
Workflow redesign means starting from the outcome a process serves and asking which steps should exist now that intelligence is cheap and increasingly actionable. It is the opposite of automating the existing mess, where each step is made faster but the sequence, handoffs and approvals stay the same.
The useful question is not "where can we insert AI?". It is: if we were designing this workflow today, knowing intelligence is cheap, which steps would still exist? Some steps vanish, some merge, some move to a person with a different role, and some new ones appear, such as review or exception handling.
Why it shows up in stronger performers
Surveys of AI results repeatedly find workflow redesign among the practices of organizations that capture more value. Productivity for an individual becomes enterprise value only when something changes downstream.
Treat it as the middle rung of the unit of change and a core part of AI transformation, with the operating model changing around it.
Read more in Stop adopting AI.
Related terms
Unit of change
The thing an AI program sets out to change: a tool, a task, a workflow, a decision or the whole operating model. Choosing too small a unit is why adoption rises without value.
AI transformation
Changing how a company works — its workflows, decisions and operating model — around what AI makes possible, rather than adding AI tools to existing processes.
Operating model
How an organization actually runs: its workflows, decisions, roles, governance and handoffs. AI creates value when it changes the operating model, not when it is bolted onto the old one.
Used in these essays
Your AI program can be efficient and still be strategically irrelevant
AI can make low-value work dramatically cheaper. That is still low-value work. The portfolio question is not only what became faster, but whether the work deserved investment in the first place.
Stop adopting AI
AI adoption is rising faster than enterprise value because companies keep installing new intelligence inside old operating models.