Automating the 80% So You Can Focus on the 20%

The promise of automation is seductive: set it up once, let it run forever. The reality is messier. Some things should absolutely be automated. Others should be done by hand, with care and judgment. Knowing the difference is the skill.

The Automation Decision Framework

Not everything that can be automated should be automated. Here’s how I think about it:

Automate When

• The task is repetitive — you do it more than once a week
• The task is rule-based — the decision can be expressed as an if-then statement
• The task is low-stakes — a mistake is easy to catch and correct
• The task is time-consuming — it takes meaningful time away from higher-value work

Keep Human When

• The task requires judgment — the right answer depends on context that’s hard to encode
• The task requires creativity — the output needs to surprise, delight, or persuade
• The task requires empathy — you’re responding to a real person with real emotions
• The task is high-stakes — a mistake is costly, embarrassing, or hard to reverse

The Automation Maturity Ladder

Most teams follow a predictable path from manual to automated:

Stage 1: Manual Everything

Every process is done by hand. This is fine when you’re small. It’s unsustainable when you grow.

Stage 2: No-Code Automation

Zapier, Make (formerly Integromat), native platform integrations. Connect your tools, set up triggers, build basic workflows. This covers 80% of use cases.

// Conceptual Zapier-style workflow
const workflow = {
  trigger: "New form submission in Typeform",
  actions: [
    "Add contact to HubSpot",
    "Send Slack notification to #sales",
    "Add row to tracking spreadsheet",
    "Send confirmation email via SendGrid"
  ]
}

Stage 3: Custom Code

When no-code hits its limits — complex conditional logic, data transformation, API integrations that don’t have native connectors — you graduate to code. Python scripts, serverless functions, custom APIs.

Stage 4: Platform

At scale, you build your own automation platform. Internal tools, custom dashboards, self-service workflow builders for non-technical team members.

What to Automate First

If you’re starting from scratch, here’s the priority order:

1. Data entry and transfer — moving data between systems manually is the highest-ROI automation target
2. Reporting — pulling data, formatting it, distributing it
3. Notifications and routing — alerting the right person when something needs attention
4. Content distribution — publishing across channels, formatting for each platform
5. Lead routing and scoring — assigning leads based on rules, scoring based on behavior

The Maintenance Reality

Here’s what automation advocates don’t tell you: every automation requires maintenance. APIs change. Platforms update. Business rules evolve. An automation that worked perfectly six months ago may be silently failing today.

Build monitoring into every automation:

• Error alerting — know immediately when a workflow fails
• Output validation — periodically check that automations are producing correct results
• Documentation — when someone leaves, the next person needs to understand what each automation does and why

The goal isn’t to automate everything. It’s to automate the right things so your team can focus their irreplaceable human judgment on the work that actually requires it.

The teams that automate well don’t just save time — they change what kind of work their team does. Less data entry, more strategy. Less formatting, more thinking. Less repetition, more creation.