This week's idea Write down one task before you hand it to AIAI helpers work best when the job is clear. Most of us carry our routines in our heads, so the tool has to guess. Spend twenty minutes this week writing out one repeat task step by step. You will see what an AI could draft, and where you want to look before anything goes out. - Pick one task you did at least twice last week, such as replying to a new enquiry or sending a meeting follow-up.
- Write each step in plain words, in order, the way you would explain it to a new assistant.
- Mark the steps that are just typing or copying. Those are good candidates for an AI draft.
- Mark the steps where a mistake would cost you, like anything a client sees. Those stay with you to check and approve.
- Paste your list into the AI tool you already use and ask it to draft the typing steps for your next real case. Read it before you use it.
SCREEN AGENTS Claude can now operate a computer screen Anthropic released an upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet along with a beta feature called computer use. It lets the AI look at a screen, move the cursor, click buttons and type text across different apps. Why it matters. Repetitive admin across several apps is the kind of work this is aimed at, though a beta tool clicking around your accounts deserves close supervision. Source: anthropic.com
WORKFLOW AGENTS Microsoft lets teams build agents that run multi-step jobs Microsoft announced that Copilot Studio can be used to build autonomous agents that carry out multi-step business workflows. Its examples include client intake and invoice processing. Why it matters. Big vendors are betting that agents will handle routine processes, so it is worth deciding now which steps in your business you would want to review before they happen. Source: blogs.microsoft.com
PRIVATE SEARCH Perplexity can search your own files alongside the web Perplexity added Internal Knowledge Search and Spaces for Pro users. You can upload your own documents, such as frameworks or standard procedures, and search them together with the public web. Why it matters. Answers grounded in your own methods are more useful than generic ones, as long as you are comfortable with where those files are stored. Source: perplexity.ai
LOCAL MODELS Meta shrinks Llama 3.2 to run on laptops and phones Meta released quantized versions of its lightweight Llama 3.2 models, which are compressed to run faster on everyday devices. Because they run on the device, data does not need to leave it. Why it matters. For owners who handle sensitive client notes, on-device AI is a path to help with drafting and summarising without sending that material to a server. Source: ai.meta.com
How SyncGrid helps When admin eats the weekThe problem. You sit down Monday meaning to work on the business. By Friday you have chased two invoices, booked four calls by email back and forth, rewritten the same follow-up five times and still not sent the proposal you promised. None of it is hard. It just never ends, and the real work waits. What the team does. SyncGrid is a team that does that work for you to review: a Chief of Staff, fifteen specialist directors and a research assistant. They draft follow-ups for contacts your notes in SyncGrid show have gone quiet. They prepare branded proposals, saved as a PDF and a Word copy in your Drive, that clients can accept online, and branded invoices. They propose calendar invites based on your real availability. Everything sits in one client list with notes, stages and deals, so the team works from what you have recorded. It does not read your inbox. What you approve. Every item. Nothing sends, posts or publishes until you say yes, and that approval is the send button, enforced in the software. You read the follow-up, the proposal, the invoice or the invite, change what you like, and only then does it go. Try this week. Keep a tally on a sticky note for one week. Every time you do an admin task, make a mark next to its name. On Friday, look at the top two. Those are where a drafted first version, from any tool or person, would give you the most time back. |
From the Academy If you want to learn at your own pace, the free courses at academy.syncgrid.io are there whenever you have a quiet hour.
Talk next week, Joey
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