AUTOMATION · JULY 16, 2026
Automate the boring middle
The biggest wins are rarely at the start or end of a process. They are in the copy-paste swamp in the middle.
Sabbir Ahmed · 7 min read
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Ask a team to describe their workflow and they will describe the beginning and the end. The cost lives in the middle: rekeying a form into a CRM, chasing a missing PDF, reconciling two spreadsheets that should agree.
Map it before you build it
- Count the handoffs, each one is a place work waits
- Time the waiting, not the doing; waiting is where days disappear
- Automate the handoff first, the task second
Durability beats cleverness
An automation that silently fails is worse than no automation, because people stop checking. Every workflow I ship is replayable, idempotent, and loud when it breaks, with a named human owner on the alert.
The goal is not fewer people. It is the same people doing work that actually requires a person.