Method
Earned Autonomy: AI that starts supervised and earns its independence
The same discipline used to run utilization review in managed care — tiered approvals, thresholds, audit trails — applied to AI.
Three stages
Every workflow moves Red → Yellow → Green
- Stage 1 · Red
Human decides
AI researches and drafts. A person makes every decision. Used for new workflows and high-risk actions.
- Stage 2 · Yellow
Human approves
AI acts, a person reviews before anything reaches a customer. Measured against a labeled test set.
- Stage 3 · Green
AI runs, people audit
Promoted one task type at a time, only after it holds its pass rate. Sampled and reviewed monthly.
Four layers
What gets installed
Most providers sell only the Build layer. The other three are why AI sticks.
Layer 1
Govern
Owners, decision rights, approval thresholds, usage policy, and a risk tier for every workflow.
Layer 2
Operate
Documented processes, handoffs, exception paths, and failure playbooks. AI goes on clean processes, never broken ones.
Layer 3
Build
The automations and agents themselves — Make, n8n, Claude, your CRM. Tool-agnostic so the system outlives any vendor.
Layer 4
Prove
Baselines, a KPI scorecard, quality sampling, and a monthly AI operations review.
Five phases
How an install runs
- 1
Align
Weeks 1–2Leadership interview, readiness score, shadow-AI inventory, top-10 workflow list.
- 2
Map
Weeks 2–3Document the three highest-value workflows and capture baselines.
- 3
Govern
Weeks 3–4Assign owners, set risk tiers, build the approval matrix and failure playbook — before building.
- 4
Deploy
Weeks 4–8Build against the rules. Run in parallel with the human process until quality thresholds are met.
- 5
Optimize
OngoingMonthly review of KPIs, exceptions, and cost. Promote workflows from Yellow to Green as they earn it.
On efficiency claims: we target large gains on specific workflows, measured against your own baseline — never a company-wide multiplier we can't show you the math for.
Find the three workflows worth automating first.
A 20-minute operations call. No pitch deck — we look at where your team's hours go and whether AI is the right fix.