Lean Before AI: Why Workflow Still Comes First
AI has moved from chat, to being embedded into tools, to helping people improve personal productivity.
But for AI to deliver real organisational value, we need to go beyond individual productivity. We need to look at the workflow itself.
Recently, I have been hearing more about the term Forward Deployed Engineer. The idea is that engineers are attached closer to user teams. They spend time understanding the workflow, learning the domain, identifying the pain points, and then designing AI workflows that can actually work in operations.
In my view, this is the right step forward.
While the AI industry calls them Forward Deployed Engineers, the underlying principle is familiar to many transformation teams.
Spend time with the business. Understand the workflow. Identify the pain points. Then redesign the workflow and the solution.
If the current workflow is inefficient, adding AI may not solve the real problem. It may only make an inefficient process faster.
This is why I think the work of transformation teams is becoming even more relevant.
Over the past few years, I have led a team of transformation managers who worked closely with business units on Lean transformation, DILO studies and workflow optimisation. We spend time with business teams to understand how work is actually done, identify bottlenecks and pain points, and improve the process.
Through this approach, the transformatoin team has helped identify improvement opportunities and supported smoother service delivery with less frustration for staff and guests.
This is also why I think organisations should start thinking about Lean Before AI.
Before applying AI, understand the workflow. Optimise the process. Reduce wasted cycle time. Remove unnecessary steps. Then apply AI where it can create the most impact.
In some cases, organisations may also need to design AI-first workflows in parallel, instead of only improving the current process.
For Transformation Offices that are already working on Lean and workflow optimisation, this is a strong starting point. They already have relationships with business units, they understand the workflows, and they know where many of the pain points are.
AI creates new possibilities.
But the starting point should still be clear.
Understand the work first, then redesign the workflow, then apply AI.
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