Had a great “aha” moment with someone this week, and I have to share it - because it’s one of the sneakiest sources of friction I see.
It’s the difference between “I need this” and “I need to do this to get this.”
We blur those two together constantly. Take a salesperson. They need to know who they’re talking to, why, and what was discussed last time. Real need. What they don’t need is to read every email from the last six months to generate that context. Those are very different things.
The person I was working with realized this while mapping their friction list. They needed to make real strategic judgment calls on a set of documents - that was the value. But first came a mountain of prep: collecting the documents, running them against organizational standards, flagging gaps. That prep work had snuck in. It felt like part of the job.
Light bulb moment: the thinking is the value. Let AI handle the prep, and that process gets cut by 60%.
Look for the sneaky friction in your own work. Where have “I need to do” tasks crept in around something you actually just need to receive? That’s where a huge amount of time is hiding - just waiting to be reclaimed.