Author: Robert Lee

If you’ve never heard of W. Edwards Deming, that’s okay. Most people haven’t. But his ideas shaped your work life without you even knowing it. What I mean by that is Deming changed how we think about managing businesses and making them better. This isn’t just ancient history – his ideas are shaping how we use AI in business today in ways that even he couldn’t have imagined.

Let me explain why this matters to you right now, especially if you’re running a small business or thinking about how to make your work more efficient.

You know how people talk about having a process for getting things done? The Deming Cycle – plan, do, study, act – is a foundational principle to build and consistently improve your processes. It’s not just some old idea from a business textbook. It’s actually more important now than ever, especially when we’re working with AI. The ways he taught us to control quality and improve processes are exactly what we need to make AI work well in our businesses. In fact, when you look at successful companies using AI today, you’ll see they’re following Deming’s principles, whether they realize it or not.

Why Understanding Processes Matters More Than Ever

Let’s talk about what a process really is. A process is just a series of connected steps that turn what you put in into something valuable at the end. In other words, it’s how you take things like information, data, money, or time and turn them into something useful for someone else or for another process. Think about it like a recipe – you start with ingredients, follow specific steps, and end up with a finished dish that someone can enjoy.

Here’s what’s exciting: AI is giving us a chance to not just write down our processes, but to automate them in ways that small businesses could never do before. Think about that for a minute – small businesses can now use the same kinds of tools that used to be available only to big companies with huge budgets and entire IT departments.

I started my first business as a side hustle precisely because process was so absent from the industry I served – political campaigns. Everything was a crisis. Nothing was consistent from one day to the next. I served my clients by remembering every day what Deming said: “If you can’t describe what you’re doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.” I still recall it to this day as a marketer and business owner. It provides the foundation for how I understand and use AI.

When you ask most small business owners how they do something specific in their business, they often can’t give you the same answer twice. The steps change from day to day, sometimes even from hour to hour. I’ve seen this countless times when consulting with business owners. One week they’re doing their social media one way, the next week it’s completely different. That’s when you know you’re looking at a job someone created for themselves, not a real business system…and it’s not even a great job. It’s exactly the type of job you complain about.

The real problem here isn’t just inconsistency – it’s that these businesses can’t grow beyond their owners. Every decision, every action, every response needs to come from that one person. That’s not just exhausting; it’s also limiting your business’s potential.

Three Key Parts of Making AI Work in Your Business

After working with dozens of businesses on their AI implementation – and more importantly learning from some of the brightest minds in the business – I’ve identified three main components of making AI work well. Let me break these down in a way that makes practical sense, and I’ll share some real examples I’ve seen work well.

1. The AI Persona Method

First, you need to think about your AI like you would think about a new employee. This method is a variation learned from Jeff J Hunter (again, I learned from the true greats in AI). When you bring someone into your business, you need to tell them three things: what their job is, who they’re helping, and how they should approach their work. 

It’s the same with AI. You need to tell it exactly what its job is – that’s its purpose. For example, if you’re creating an AI for customer service, its job might be to handle initial customer inquiries and route them to the right department. You need to explain who it’s serving and what makes its work valuable – that’s its professionalism. In our customer service example, this means understanding what good customer service looks like and what customers expect.

You also need to give it a way to handle and share information – that’s its personality. I’ve found that using Myers-Briggs personality types as a framework here works incredibly well. For instance, an ISTJ personality type might work great for analytical tasks, while an ENFJ might be better for customer-facing roles. A great resource for learning about personality types is the website 16personalities.com.

Just for fun, I even suggest you take the test for yourself to see what personality type you are.

2. Building Knowledge and Understanding

Next, you need to give your AI the knowledge it needs to do its job well. This is where tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT become really useful working in concert.

Here’s what I do: I start by asking basic questions in Perplexity about whatever topic I’m building the bot for. For example, if I’m creating an AI for email marketing, I’ll ask about email marketing best practices, common metrics, and successful campaign examples. Then I follow up with more detailed questions, gathering information and sources along the way.

The key here is to build layers of knowledge. Start with the basics, then add industry-specific information, then company-specific details. Finally, I take all that research to ChatGPT and have it create a technical manual that becomes the foundation for what the AI needs to know. This becomes your AI’s knowledge base – its textbook, if you will.

Don’t let this stop you from also using other data sources: your own writing samples, reports you have access to, voice memos you recorded about a subject are just examples. The key here is that the more data you give to your bot to understand, the better it is at contextualizing the massive amount of training data it has.

3. Clear Step-by-Step Instructions

The last part is creating clear instructions, and this is where a lot of people get stuck. Each step in your process needs to create something valuable for the next step. One invaluable tool is a value stream map. Developed by Toyota, this visualization tool diagrams all the valuable and non-valuable steps in bringing a “product” to the customer. While it was developed by Toyota for car manufacturing, its simplicity makes it applicable to planning the use of AI in your business, no matter the type.

You want to start with the current state of what the process looks like. You have to be honest with yourself here and map things out as they are right now. Then, you simply evaluate and identify what you’d like the process to ultimately look like by adding as much value as possible at every step of the process, called the value (or future) state. 

Then, for AI – you write the work instructions to the value state. Make sure you write each step as you would explain it to an employee so they could produce valuable outputs at each stage of the process. Remember that a process is nothing more than an interrelated set of activities that take inputs and produce valuable outputs.

Yes, it’s that simple.

Think about it like building a house. You don’t just list random construction tasks – you need each step to build on the last one in a way that makes sense. That’s how good processes work. Start with the foundation, then frame the walls, then add the roof. Each step depends on the previous one being done right.

Creating a Business That Runs on AI

Here’s where things get interesting. Once you understand these parts, you can start creating AI systems for different levels of your business. Think of it like a company structure: you have leadership making big decisions, managers turning those decisions into plans, and teams carrying out those plans.

Let’s take the AI Branding Academy as the perfect example for this. You develop a process – or 9 processes to be specific – to help you set the strategic vision for your brand. This is your c-suite leadership work. 

Then, working through your brand-essentials and style guides, you create a director level bot and five middle manager bots that help you narrow your strategic vision into more tactically oriented bots. And finally, you can create an employee for every single tactical step you need to take – using the method above to train your employees.

Much like a process is a set of interrelated activities, a business is a set of interrelated processes to help deliver to their customers solutions while generating revenue for the owner and investors. Looking at each bot as a process, you can create very deep, very efficient business operations that remain simple, focused, and profitable.

Becoming a Process Expert

When you understand how to build AI systems this way, you’re doing what big consulting firms like Deloitte and KPMG do – just with a modern twist. These firms get paid billions every year to help businesses improve their processes. 

And, now you can do similar work by combining traditional process knowledge with AI.

I remember working at an engineering firm almost 20 years ago, where we used many of these same process principles. The only difference now is that AI makes these approaches accessible to everyone. You don’t need a team of engineers or consultants to create efficient, repeatable processes anymore.

We’re not merely hitting the “easy button” – we’re actually creating it by building systems that last and can grow with your business. We’re connecting big-picture strategy to day-to-day work in a way that actually makes sense. This is especially important for small businesses that need to compete with larger companies.

Getting Started

Starting with process-driven AI isn’t as hard as it might sound. Pick one thing you do regularly in your business. Write down each step, focusing on what each step produces. Then use the three parts we talked about to create your first AI system.

I usually recommend starting with something simple but important. Maybe it’s how you handle customer inquiries or how you create social media content. The key is to choose something you do often enough to see the benefits quickly.

The great thing about this approach is that once you get it, you can create effective AI systems in about 20-30 minutes. And the more you practice, the better and faster you get. I’ve seen businesses go from taking days to set up a new process to doing it in under an hour.

What This Means for the Future

We’re seeing a big change in how small businesses can operate. Instead of being stuck doing everything yourself, you can build systems that work consistently and grow with your business. This isn’t just about saving time – it’s about creating a business that can scale without requiring more and more of your personal attention.

Think about what this means for your average day. Instead of being caught up in routine tasks, you can focus on growing your business. Instead of being the bottleneck for every decision, you can have systems that handle the predictable parts of your work.

This is exactly what Deming was talking about – creating systems that work consistently well and always get better. The difference is that now we have AI to help us build these systems in ways that work for businesses of any size. Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or running a growing team, these principles can transform how your business operates.

Your Next Step

Here’s what I want you to do next: Pick one process in your business that you do over and over. Write down every step, thinking about what each step creates. Use the three-part framework we talked about to build your first AI system. Test it out, make it better, and then move on to the next process.

Start small, but think big. Maybe begin with how you handle email inquiries or how you create your weekly newsletter. Document exactly how you do it now, then think about how AI could help make it more consistent and efficient.

Remember, you don’t need to make it perfect right away. The goal is to start thinking about your business in terms of processes and gradually build systems that make your work easier and more effective. Every improvement, no matter how small, moves you closer to having a business that runs smoothly without requiring your constant attention.

Because that’s what this is all about – creating a business that works for you, instead of you working for it. When you combine Deming’s time-tested ideas with today’s AI tools, you can make that happen. And the best part? You can start today, with just one process.ness operations? Start by identifying which of these Custom GPT types aligns with your most pressing business needs. Then, watch as your productivity soars and your processes streamline themselves.

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