Automation and onions

Automation is like a giant onion.

It makes your meal tastier… unless your meal is an onion.

So let’s look at how you can automate to enhance your work (instead of bringing everybody to tears)</p>

Bad ways to automate:

Use low-pay low-skill offshore talent services. Where there are people, hire masters, train masterfully, or both.
Replace human touch with templates. When challenger brands act like faceless corps, users choose the latter.
Daisy-chain no-code tools and call it a ‘service’. Do you deem microwave dinners and restaurants comparable?
Strip away fun, UX, and theatre because it’s not ‘essential’. Despite those being why users feel attached to you.

Automate when it’s better than you alone. Eg common questions are best answered with a short email + a thoughtful pre-made video, than as an email alone.
Create leverage when others are better than you. Eg sending all video tasks to a great animator, instead of just doing talking-head selfies, for stickier videos.
Incorporate each that outperforms manual input. Eg creating scripts that batch-process social graphics to different sizes as you’d do it. Just like you, but faster.
Use all that recovered time to enhance the user experience. Eg creating immersive onboarding experiences, interactive de-platforming ad experiences, or better content.

I explore this topic in more detail in this week’s issue of The Productoon newsletter. Check it out!