🚩 Tactical Memo 043: The Automate-Assist-Human Framework

Read time: 7 minutes

Welcome to Tactical Memo, my newsletter where I share clear lessons and simple systems for people who run projects, lead teams, and make decisions.

If you want practical guidance you can use at work this week, you are in the right place.

👉 Why Read This Edition: You will see how the smartest leaders are not using AI for everything. They are using it for the right things, keeping the hard stuff for themselves, and pulling ahead as a result.

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THE PROBLEM

You are using AI wrong. And it is costing you more than you think.

Here is what most people do. They try to automate everything. They hand off decisions to AI. They relay AI-generated summaries in meetings without adding a single original thought. They confuse being busy with AI tools for actually leading.

And here is what happens. They produce faster garbage. They lose the trust of their stakeholders. They find themselves cut out of the conversations that actually matter. The work gets done, but no one knows who to call when something goes sideways.

Then there is the other failure mode. The person who refuses to touch AI at all. Still writing status reports by hand. Still reformatting the same spreadsheet every Monday. Still spending three hours on a deck that could have been drafted in twenty minutes. Too proud to delegate to a tool, too busy to ever get ahead.

Both are losing. The winner is the person who knows the difference.

There are exactly three types of work. Work AI should own completely. Work AI should start but you should finish. And work you should never hand off to a machine. Most people cannot tell them apart. That is the gap.

THE SOLUTION: THE AUTOMATE-ASSIST-HUMAN FRAMEWORK

Think of every task on your plate as falling into one of three buckets. Once you can sort them fast, you stop wasting your time and start spending it where it counts.

Bucket One: Automate. This is the repetitive, data-heavy work. Drafting project scopes. Building initial plans and roadmaps. Turning raw data into manager-ready visuals. Generating meeting agendas, status reports, and executive summaries. Scanning datasets for early risk signals. If the task has a clear pattern and a clear output, AI can own the first draft and sometimes the final one. Stop touching this work yourself. Every hour you spend here is an hour you are not spending on strategy.

Bucket Two: Assist. This is where complex work starts. You are not handing it off. You are using AI to get unstuck faster. You give it context, it gives you options, and you make the call. Think of it as a starting point, not a finishing point. If you find yourself spending an hour on something that requires judgment, AI can cut that to fifteen minutes. Your brain still has to close the loop.

Bucket Three: Human. This is the work that cannot be delegated. Not to a junior. Not to a contractor. Not to a machine. Managing stakeholder politics. Having the hard conversation that needs to happen but no one wants to have. Building trust with a person who is watching whether you keep your word. Making a call under pressure when the data is incomplete and the room is waiting on you. This work depends on emotional intelligence, personal credibility, and accountability. AI provides inputs. You make the decision. You own the result.

HOW TO APPLY IT THIS WEEK

Step 1: Do a task audit. Take fifteen minutes and write down every recurring task you did last week. Be honest. Include the small stuff.

Step 2: Sort them into buckets. For each task, ask one question: Does this require a human to be trusted, accountable, or emotionally present? If yes, it is a Human task. If it starts complex but AI can accelerate it, it is Assist. If it is repetitive with a predictable output, it is Automate.

Step 3: Offload the bottom bucket immediately. Pick the two or three Automate tasks and stop doing them manually this week. Build the prompt, set up the workflow, or use a tool. The time you get back is your investment capital.

Step 4: Use AI as a co-pilot, not a ghostwriter. For your Assist tasks, use AI to build the first version and then add your judgment, your context, and your point of view. Do not relay AI output as your own thinking. Add to it. That is what makes you irreplaceable.

Step 5: Guard the Human bucket like it is your career. Because it is. Every time you show up in a hard conversation, make a clear call under pressure, or build trust with someone who is skeptical, that is your moat. No tool is coming for that. Do not dilute it by staying buried in the Automate work.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DO THIS

The first week feels like setup. You are building prompts, figuring out what to hand off, maybe doing things twice as you create the new workflow. Do not quit. That is normal.

By week three, the Automate work is running with minimal input from you. Your calendar has real gaps in it, not the kind you fill immediately with more meetings.

By month two, you have made a shift that most people around you have not made. You are showing up to the strategic work prepared. You are ahead of problems instead of reacting to them. You are the person in the room who adds context and judgment, not just information. That is a different kind of career.

THE REAL TEST

Ask yourself one question: if AI disappeared tomorrow, could you still do your job well?

If the answer is no, because you have been using it as a crutch for decisions and thinking, that is a problem.

If the answer is yes, because you use it to clear the low-value work so you can show up fully for the high-value work, that is leverage.

The goal is not to be the person who uses AI the most. The goal is to be the person whose judgment, relationships, and decisions cannot be replicated by any tool. Use AI to protect your time for that.

Trade short-term effort for long-term leverage. Actively drive decisions. Do not just relay information.

That is the difference between a leader and a dispatcher.

If this helped you, send it to someone who could use it this week.

Until next time,
Justin

✍️ From the Desk of Justin Bateh, PhD
Simple tactics. Real results. No fluff.