This lesson is being recorded
Every video of this course is being uploaded to my YouTube channel. Subscribe so you do not miss it.
Bruno Ashford @brunoashfordSubscribeModule 1 · Lesson 1.4 · 11 min
Where Agentic AI Earns Its Place
Use clear criteria to choose which tasks to automate first and which to never delegate.
Use ← → to move. The marker highlights text and the pencil draws on the slide; navigation locks while you annotate. Undo removes the last mark, Esc exits.
1Score impact
From 1 to 5: how many hours and how much money does this task cost, and does removing it speed up revenue? A task that takes expensive owner time or delays sales scores high.
2Score risk
From 1 to 5: if the agent gets it wrong, who notices and what does it cost? Internal and easy to fix is 1. Reaches a client, money, legal or reputation is 5. Risk does not rule a task out; it sets the autonomy rung.
3Score ease
From 1 to 5: are the steps written down, is the data digital, is it the same every time? A task that lives in one person's head and on paper scores low for now. Documenting it first is often the real win.
4Calculate and choose
Opportunity score equals impact times ease, divided by risk. Sort by score and pick your top three, with no more than one high-risk task and none on your never-delegate list. You can let Claude do the arithmetic and challenge your picks.
Here is my Opportunity Matrix. Calculate the opportunity score for each row as Impact x Ease / Risk. Then recommend my top 3 tasks to start with, with at most one task where Risk is 4 or 5, and explain in one sentence why each one made the cut. Challenge any score that looks inconsistent.5Write your never-delegate list
Some things stay human no matter the score: hiring and firing, final pricing on big deals, legal or medical judgment, apologising to an upset client. The agent may prepare the facts. You make the call.
The most expensive mistake I see is not a bad agent. It is a good agent pointed at the wrong task. An owner spends three weekends automating something that takes 20 minutes a month, while the proposal process that eats nine hours a week stays untouched because it felt too important to try.
In this lesson we take the top 10 from your Weekly Time Map and score each task on impact, risk and ease. The result is your Opportunity Matrix, and it will tell you, with numbers, where to start.
Key points
- Score every task on impact, risk and ease.
- Opportunity score = impact x ease / risk.
- Risk sets the autonomy rung, not a ban.
- Start with three, at most one high-risk.
- Keep a written never-delegate list.
Avoid
- Automating what is fun instead of what is expensive.
- Starting with the riskiest, most visible task to impress the team.
- Picking ten tasks at once and finishing none.
- Skipping tasks that are hard only because nobody has written the steps down.
The skincare founder's top scorers were product descriptions (impact 4, risk 2, ease 5), the weekly sales spreadsheet (impact 4, risk 2, ease 4) and supplier reorder emails (impact 3, risk 3, ease 4). Refund decisions for angry customers scored high on impact but went on the never-delegate list. She started with descriptions because the brand voice was already written down, and had the first 60 done in an afternoon.