Ask the people closest to the work where the waste is. They won’t need time to think.
The approval that always comes back yes. The meeting that could be a two-line update. The handoff that adds three days and catches nothing. The process everyone follows because “that’s how we do it.”
They see it every day. So why is it still there?
Seeing It Isn’t the Problem
Waste doesn’t survive because nobody notices it. It survives because nobody feels allowed to remove it.
Adding something takes one request. Removing it takes courage. Nobody knows who has the authority to kill a process, and the risk is lopsided: remove something that matters and it’s on you. Leave it alone and nobody ever blames you.
Most people tried once. They raised it, and nothing happened. That’s all it takes.
The day someone stops pointing out the waste isn’t the day they stopped seeing it. It’s the day they stopped believing it would matter.
The Real Cost
Your sharpest people spend their energy navigating the system instead of improving it. The friction builds into a tiredness that never shows up on a report. Eventually the best ones stop caring or leave.
That’s how a business gets slow. Not through one bad decision, but through people who could see a better way and didn’t feel allowed to take it.
And speed is the strategy now. Markets shift monthly. The companies that win will be the ones whose people can act on what they see without waiting for a committee.
Why This Is Your AI Strategy
Every company wants agents running its processes. Most are about to automate the waste.
An agent can’t tell which approval is theater or which step exists because of a mistake from five years ago. It follows everything you give it, faithfully and at scale. Hand it a bloated process and you get bloat that moves faster. Your process isn’t ready for agents!
The people who know what to cut are the same people who see the waste every day. They’re the ones who can tell an agent what actually matters, what to skip, and where human judgment still belongs. The companies that get real value from AI won’t be the ones with the best tools. They’ll be the ones whose people were already empowered to strip a process down to what matters before handing it off.
That’s the future of work worth building: agents take the repetitive steps, and people own the judgment, including the judgment about what shouldn’t exist at all. But it only works if your people believe they’re allowed to make that call.
Permission isn’t a culture initiative running alongside your AI plans. It is the AI plan.
Permission Is Something You Prove
Say it out loud: “You have the authority to change it.”
Then the real test comes the first time someone uses it. If they cut something that turns out to matter, put it back, thank them, and move on. Do that once and people will believe you. Punish it once and you’ll never hear another idea.
Anything that doesn’t serve a customer, protect the business, or manage a real risk is fair game. Pause it before you kill it. And celebrate removals as loudly as you’d celebrate a launch.
Put Them Down
Most leadership teams ask “what should we add?”
The better question is “what are our people carrying that they don’t need to?” And do they believe they’re allowed to put it down?
This week, ask your team for three things they’d stop doing tomorrow if it were their call. Then tell them it is.
Reply and tell me what you hear.
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