From the book · Unleash Your Business With AI
Chapter 26: The AI map of your business
The 2 prompts from Chapter 26, ready to copy, with the chapter's mistakes to avoid and three tasks for this week.
Fill it in within an hour
Copy this prompt
[Paste your business note from Chapter 5] Here is a rough list of the recurring tasks in my business, by department: [paste the list, with no customer names, phone numbers or amounts owed] Turn this into an AI map. Use a table with these columns: Department and task | Who should own and check it (role, not name) | Bucket | Why. Rules: 1. Buckets are: Automate (runs without a person each time, reviewed on a schedule), Assist (AI drafts, a person checks and decides), Human (a person decides and does it). 2. Never put pricing, discounts, delivery dates, refunds, credit limits, legal or tax positions, hiring decisions or key relationship conversations in Automate. Mark them Human. 3. If you are unsure, choose Assist. 4. Use only the tasks I listed. Do not add tasks. After the table, you may list up to 5 tasks a business like mine usually does that are missing from my list, clearly marked "possibly missing". 5. Do not guess which stage each task is at. Leave that for me. Then list the 5 tasks I should consider first, with one line of reasoning each. Ask me up to 5 questions first if you need more information.
What you should get back: a table you can paste into a sheet, a short "possibly missing" list and five suggested starting points.
Check: the bucket for every line that touches money or a customer. You decide the buckets. The draft only saves you typing.
That's the first one
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- When to add the next system
- Mistakes to avoid
- Do this week
When to add the next system
Copy this prompt
Here is my AI map from last quarter and the same map today: [paste both tables, with no customer names or personal data] Here are the weekly numbers we recorded for each system: [paste] 1. List which tasks moved up a stage, which stayed and which went backwards. 2. For each task that stayed at the same stage for the whole quarter, ask me one question that would help me find out why. 3. Compare the recorded numbers, first week against last week, for each system. Show each calculation. Do not estimate any number that is not in what I pasted. If a number is missing, write "not recorded". 4. Suggest at most two lines to work on next quarter and say which condition each one still fails. Do not recommend automating anything that involves prices, discounts, delivery dates, refunds, credit, tax, legal matters or hiring.
What you should get back: a short list of what moved, questions about what did not, and a comparison of your own numbers with the working shown.
Check: every figure against your sheet. AI is unreliable at arithmetic (Chapter 18), so recalculate at least one change yourself.
Mistakes to avoid
- Mapping tools, not tasks. "We use ChatGPT and Gemini" is not a map. "Quotation from the price list, sales manager, assist, stage 3" is.
- Marking stages generously. If the prompt lives on one person's phone, the line is at stage 1.
- Leaving the owner column blank. A line without a name does not run.
- Starting the next system because the first one has become boring. Boring is the sign that it is working. Check the five conditions.
- Treating stage 4 as "no human". People still approve what goes out and decide anything about money.
- Judging the whole effort on one month's sales. Look at the numbers recorded for each system.
Do this week
- Copy the blank map into a sheet and fill in every recurring task for two departments, with owner, checker and bucket.
- Mark the stage for each line using the proof column, then ask one team member to show you the saved prompt for any line you marked 2 or higher.
- Choose one line at stage 2, name its owner and checker, and write beside it the one number you will record every week.