Good automation doesn't eliminate human decisions
Good automation doesn't eliminate human decisions. It makes them more visible, deliberate, and informed. Sometimes that means deliberately keeping a manual step.
I was walking through a procurement workflow recently with a client when something interesting came up.
The goal was to eliminate repetitive work through automation: collect purchasing requests, track approvals, update records, and move items through the process without someone having to manually coordinate every step.
During the walkthrough, the team asked for something I didn't expect. They wanted to review the approved items before moving them into the next stage.
I suspect that sounds like adding a manual step to something we're trying to automate. I should push back, right? Wasn't the whole point to remove those steps?
Yes and No.
I've been automating things for a long time, well before AI became part of the conversation. But I still deliberately include manual reviews between steps - especially when decisions are difficult to reverse or money is involved.
There's a difference between automating repetitive work and automating decisions.
Deciding whether a collection of approved purchases is ready to move forward is automatable, but should it be?
Like it or not, someone still owns the outcome of that decision.
Of course, not every review step deserves to survive.
Sometimes people want additional approvals because they don't trust the system, lack visibility, or have simply grown accustomed to checking everything. Those are problems worth solving, not steps worth preserving. The distinction is whether someone is making a meaningful decision or just checking that the automation did its job.
In this case, the walkthrough surfaced something important. The review wasn't simply another approval. It was a deliberate checkpoint before the work moved forward.
So I didn't push back.
When people understand where they retain control, they are more comfortable trusting automation.
Many approach automation with the wrong objective. They try to eliminate as many human interactions as possible. Then, they wonder why people resist.
Good automation doesn't eliminate human decisions. It makes them more visible, deliberate, and informed. Sometimes that means deliberately keeping a manual step.
Originally posted on LinkedIn.