What does it mean for employees to be able to handle initial responses?
When people say they want to delegate to employees, they sometimes take it to an extreme.
Employees must be able to make decisions just like the president.
Employees must be able to complete customer interactions on their own.
The business must be in a state where it runs without the president looking at anything at all.
Of course, that would be ideal in the end.
However, for a company with annual sales of around 100 million yen, aiming for that from the start will inevitably fail.
What you should aim for first is a state where employees can handle initial responses. Employees create a 60 to 70 percent complete initial draft, and the president only checks the direction and risks. Whether or not you can draw this line makes a huge difference in the number of tasks that come back to the president's desk.
Being able to handle initial responses is different from just being able to perform tasks
It is no longer rare for employees to be able to use ChatGPT.
Drafting emails. Summarizing meeting minutes. Proposing document structures.
This is the state of being able to perform tasks with AI.
The state of being able to handle initial responses is a step above that.
It is when an employee can compile an initial draft based on the president's judgment criteria and present it to the president, asking, 'Is it okay to proceed with Plan A?' Only when they reach this point can we say that employees are capable of handling initial responses.
Being able to operate a tool and being able to bring something to a state where it can be submitted are two different things.
Handling initial responses does not mean employees make decisions on their own
A state where employees can handle initial responses does not mean that employees decide everything on their own.
It is a state where, based on the president's judgment criteria, employees can use AI to draft, organize, and generate options. The president then checks it at the end.
However, this does not mean fixing it from scratch.
The employee brings a 60 to 70 percent complete initial draft.
The president only looks at the direction, price, risks, and final presentation.
By enabling employees to use AI to bring work that the president used to handle at 100 percent up to 60 percent, the amount of work returning to the president will definitely decrease.
Three structures that stop initial responses
There are three common structures in companies where employees cannot take the step toward handling initial responses.
1. The scope of work is not defined
It is unclear which tasks are acceptable for initial response.
Is customer support okay? Are proposals okay? What about recruitment copy?
When the scope is ambiguous, employees stop because they do not know if they are allowed to touch it.
2. The criteria for judgment are invisible
Even if an employee creates an initial draft, the president corrects it in the end.
They do not know what will be corrected, nor do they know how much they are trusted to handle.
In this state, employees decide that it is faster to just ask the president after all.
3. There are no rules for when things go wrong
How do we revert things when an initial draft is off-base?
Who stops it if customer information is included?
When a mistake is about to reach a customer, where do we hit the brakes?
If this is not decided, employees become cautious and end up keeping the work to themselves.
By just putting these three things in place, the same employees will stop hesitating before taking initial action.
Tasks that are easy to transition to initial response
There is no need to transfer all tasks to employees at once. Start with tasks that are easy to transition to initial response.
Customer support
Summarize inquiry content using AI.
Create a draft reply based on past response examples.
Check against the president's judgment criteria checklist.
Only ask the president to confirm if this draft reply is acceptable.
Proposal and document creation
Organize customer information.
Create a structure draft by referring to past proposals.
Make the phrasing closer to the president's style.
The president reviews the direction and pricing.
Post-meeting organization
Summarize meeting minutes using AI.
Organize To-Dos, responsible parties, and deadlines.
Extract only the items that require the president's instructions.
Recruitment response
Organize candidate information.
Create confirmation items before interviews.
Create a draft of the reply text.
The president only reviews the final decision.
These are tasks that are relatively well-suited for AI.
The boundary for initial response decisions (held by the president vs. held by employees)
On the other hand, there are some tasks that should not be delegated to employees from the start.
Presenting final terms to key clients
Decisions on significant discounts
Initial response strategy for complaints
Final hiring decisions
Communications regarding company policy
These should be held by the president.
The important thing is not to let go of everything, but to distinguish between tasks to delegate and tasks to retain.
Companies where initial responses work well have a clear boundary between the president and the employees.
Areas for employees to handle:
Drafting the initial version
Referencing past responses
Proposing three options
Self-checking before submission
Areas for the president to handle:
Final decision on direction
Determining prices and terms
Initial contact with key clients
Feasibility of handling exceptions
The president explicitly stating, "I will handle everything from this point forward," acts as a safety mechanism for employees.
When employees are in a state of "not knowing how far they should proceed," no amount of AI usage will result in an effective initial response.
Typical workflow for initial responses using AI
The typical flow for initial responses can be organized simply.
1. Employees organize case information and pass it to the AI
2. AI generates drafts, summaries, or proposed options
3. Employees verify against a decision-making checklist
4. Submit to the president as a 60-70% complete initial draft
5. The president reviews only the direction and risks to make a decision
6. Employees send the finalized version to the client or internal stakeholders
Employees handle steps 1 through 4, while the president only handles step 5.
By standardizing this flow for each task, employees no longer need to think about "what to do and how far to take it" every single time.
Three essentials to prepare before delegating initial responses
Before delegating initial responses, at a minimum, document the following three points.
1. List of target tasks
List the tasks that can be handled by AI for initial responses versus those that the president will retain control over.
If you just say "use it as you like," employees will not take action.
2. List of prohibited inputs
Clearly distinguish between information that can be entered into the AI and information that must not be.
This includes customer information, confidential data, and unreleased information.
Deciding this at the start allows employees to use AI with peace of mind.
3. Decision-making checklist
Articulate what the president looks for when giving approval.
Examples include "Is it easy to read?", "Does it use the customer's language?", and "Is the price clearly stated?"
Employees can improve the quality of their initial drafts by simply going through this checklist before submission.
These three points are not a special mechanism.
Even so, only companies that put this on paper rather than just speaking it will see initial responses start to function effectively.
Feedback design to enable employees to continue handling initial responses
Initial response is not something that ends once it starts.
Establish a feedback template so that employees can continue to provide initial drafts.
After the president reviews the initial draft, they should provide only the following three things back to the employee.
What was good
The reason for the correction
Points for the employee to be mindful of in the future
Conveying this verbally for just one minute each time is enough to ensure that the quality of employee initial drafts improves steadily on a weekly basis.
Conversely, if the president makes corrections without saying anything, the employee will not understand what they did wrong or how.
Do not just finish by making corrections; provide a single word on the reason for the correction. This is the condition for employees to be able to continue handling initial responses.
Escalation rules for failures
Failures will inevitably occur in initial responses. What is important then is that the employee does not shoulder the burden alone.
At a minimum, decide on the following three escalation rules.
If a strong reaction is received from a customer, share it with the president immediately
Do not answer questions regarding price, terms, or contracts on the spot; take them back for review
When unsure of a decision, confirm only the direction with the president before submitting
Employees stopping is not a bad thing in itself. If the places to stop and who to escalate to after stopping are decided, failures will not become accidents.
If this is not decided, employees will feel afraid of using AI itself.
The role of the president after initial responses start running smoothly
Once employees start taking on initial responses, the president's role will definitely change.
The tasks the president used to do—creating initial drafts, organizing, and generating ideas—will shift to employees and AI.
What remains for the president are the following three things:
Judging the direction
Handling exceptions and risk assessment
Initial contact with key clients
The president will no longer be the person who thinks from scratch every time, but the person who makes the final decision.
Once you reach this point, the quality of consultations coming from employees will also change.
It will change from "What should I do about this?" to "May I proceed with Plan A?"
Deliverables to create in 90 days
If you were to create a state where employees can handle initial responses in 90 days, the following deliverables are necessary:
1. List of tasks for AI initial response 2. List of tasks the president retains 3. List of prohibited input information 4. Judgment criteria checklist by task 5. AI templates by task 6. Pre-submission checklist for employees 7. Escalation flow for failures
Once these are in place, employees can use AI to act without hesitation. The president can focus solely on "making decisions" rather than checking every single thing.
What you aim for in 90 days is not perfect automation. It is a state where employees can create initial drafts for 3 to 5 target tasks.
For example,
Being able to create draft replies for customer inquiries
Being able to create draft structures for proposals
Being able to organize To-Dos after meetings
Being able to create draft replies to job candidates
Being able to create a draft of outgoing communications
Once this state is achieved, the president no longer has to think from scratch every single time.
Connecting with subsidy training and internal training
An increasing number of companies are incorporating AI training using resources like the Human Resources Development Support Subsidy.
This is not to say that training itself is useless.
However, training alone will not produce employees capable of handling initial responses.
Before and after the training, it is necessary to have a list of target tasks, a list of prohibited inputs, and a checklist of judgment criteria prepared within the company.
In companies where these are in place, employees' actions change completely even when they receive the same training. This is because the prompts and operations learned in the training can be directly integrated into the company's initial response workflow.
Conversely, in companies where these are not in place, the training ends as a "learning event," and employees simply return to their original tasks.
Complete the design of the initial response before the training.
This is the only way to connect training to practical work.
Summary
A state where employees can handle initial responses does not mean that employees make all decisions on behalf of the president.
It is a state where they can use AI to create drafts, organize information, and generate options based on the president's judgment criteria.
The president focuses on final decisions.
Employees create initial drafts following a template instead of struggling from scratch.
Target task list, prohibited input list, judgment criteria checklist, pre-submission checklist, and escalation flow. Prepare materials that can be written on a single sheet of paper to ensure employees can create initial drafts without hesitation.
This is a realistic approach to AI utilization for companies with annual sales of around 100 million yen.
First, try diagnosing the tasks that are currently concentrated on the president.
If you want to know "which tasks in our company can be transitioned to initial response handling," please start with a 3-minute diagnosis.
Click here for the president's task delegation diagnosis
https://tally.so/r/BzAMZ4
After the diagnosis, we also provide information on a 60-minute consultation on the results screen for those who need it.