Before AI Can Help, It Needs to Understand Your Workflow

“61% of organizations manage half or more of their content outside of official systems, leaving critical processes undocumented and informal.”
(AIIM white paper PDF)

Ask five people how they complete a routine task, and you’ll probably hear five different stories. These aren’t tales of inefficiency — they’re snapshots of reality. People find their way. They rely on memory, sticky notes, screenshots, and instincts honed over time. The real magic of getting work done often lives between the lines of your company’s SOP.

This is where AI meets its first obstacle. No matter how sophisticated the tool — Copilot, ChatGPT, RPA bots — it can’t improve what it doesn’t understand. If your workflows are scattered, improvised, or undocumented, your AI investment may wind up automating confusion.

Why SOPs Aren’t Enough Anymore

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) outline how things are supposed to work. But in most organizations, what’s documented is only half the story. What’s not written down — the side conversations, the tab-switching rituals, the workaround scripts — that’s where most of the real workflow lives.

If you try to layer AI on top of an SOP without understanding how people actually do the work, you’re going to get unpredictable results. Automations will be misaligned. Reports will be formatted incorrectly. Bots will click the wrong buttons.

Think of SOPs as stage directions. What you need is the actual performance.

What Is an Individual Workflow?

An individual workflow is the path someone takes to get from “task received” to “task complete.” It includes every decision, every shortcut, and every nuance — even the ones they don’t realize they’re making.

For example, submitting a travel expense involves more than uploading receipts. It might include digging through emails, renaming PDFs to a specific format, cross-checking with a personal spreadsheet, and waiting for an unofficial nod from finance. That’s the workflow. Unless AI can see the whole process, it can’t offer meaningful help.

This is the work layer where AI can become a brilliant assistant — or an annoying interloper.

Why AI Needs Workflow Context to Be Useful

AI needs specificity. It needs a map. Drop it into a process with missing pieces, and it will start guessing. And guesswork is expensive in business.

We’ve all seen automation fail because it lacked context. Maybe a chatbot gave a customer the wrong answer. Perhaps a document generator filled in the wrong template. These aren’t technology failures — they’re clarity failures.

To make AI work for your business, you must teach it not just the rules but the rituals. And that starts with documenting what your people are actually doing.

How to Capture Real-World Workflows

Here’s a five-step approach to documenting workflows in a way that actually prepares you for AI:

1. Pick a high-impact task. Start with something that’s repeated often, like onboarding, responding to inquiries, or submitting reports.
2. Shadow the people who do the task best. Observe their screens, watch their clicks, ask questions, and capture even the “this is just something I do” moments.
3. Map the steps in sequence. Use simple language. Include software tools, bookmarks, email templates, folders, and physical aids.
4. Ask: What’s manual? What’s repetitive? What requires judgment? This helps you distinguish between what AI can handle and what should remain human-led.
5. Compare this to your current SOP. You’ll likely find gaps — areas where your documentation needs to catch up with reality.

Example: One employee uses a macro to reformat spreadsheets before sending them to leadership. This isn’t in the SOP, but it saves hours weekly. Once it’s documented, that task is ripe for AI assistance.

Modern SOPs: Blending Structure and Flexibility

“According to McKinsey, nearly 30% of sales-related activities can be automated, freeing up valuable time for human interaction and higher-value work.”

(McKinsey & Company white paper pdf)

Once you’ve captured individual workflows, it’s time to upgrade your SOPs. This is not to rigidly lock everyone in, but to provide clear guidance on where AI belongs.

A next-generation SOP might include:

• Clear, documented steps for both humans and AI
• Built-in flexibility for edge cases and exceptions
• Specific AI commands like “Use Copilot to summarize notes before submission”
• Checkpoints for human validation

These dynamic SOPs become more than documents — they become playbooks for collaboration between people and their digital assistants.

Real Results: What You Unlock by Doing This

“74% of companies prioritize AI, but few align it to real workflows.”
(PwC Global AI Study white paper pdf)

The companies that invest time in workflow discovery and integration see real benefits:

• More useful AI tools: Automations that actually save time and reduce stress
• Improved training: SOPs reflect reality, so new hires get up to speed faster
• Fewer errors: Tasks happen the same way each time, with AI backing them up
• Innovation: Employees can offload grunt work and focus on improvement

Conclusion: Start With a Conversation

AI can’t guess how your business runs. It needs you to show it. And that starts by talking to your team.

“How do you really do this task?”

That one question can uncover the hidden knowledge you need to unlock automation. It’s not about documenting every click — it’s about surfacing the logic behind the work and using that insight to make AI smarter, faster, and more helpful.

AI isn’t here to replace your people. But it is here to learn from them. And the sooner it does, the sooner it can start pulling its weight.