The Automation Catch-22: Too Busy Doing the Task to Automate It

Too busy doing the task to automate the task? That’s the catch-22 most businesses are stuck in.

Improvement takes three steps

1. Accept you need to improve. Businesses almost always get this one. They already know what’s slowing them down.

2. Find the time to improve. This is where things go wrong.

3. Know what to improve. Surprisingly, the easiest of the three.

Why step two traps you

It usually goes like this. You need to automate a task. But whatever level of automation you need, someone still has to set time aside to build it. And your time keeps going to completing the very task you want to automate.

That’s the catch-22 of business process automation: the work you most want to get rid of is exactly what stops you getting rid of it.

Step three is easier than you think

Knowing what to improve is the easy part. Spend half an hour talking through how a process really works, and the pain points name themselves: the double entry, the copy-paste, the report someone rebuilds by hand every week. Once you can see the problem, the game begins.

How to break the loop

• Start small. Pick the smallest automation that frees an hour a week.
• Reinvest the hour. Spend the time you freed on automating the next thing.
• Or hand it over. Have someone else build it while you keep running the business.

So if you run a business, lead a department, or have a lot of processes that need improving, you’re probably stuck at step two. Every hour you free pays for the next one. Once you get past it, the magic begins.