How To Replace An Underperforming Team Member With An AI Agent

Forbes

2 days ago

How to replace an underperforming team member with an AI agent
Your business no longer runs on people. It runs on AI. Every day, business owners make the same revenue with a lower headcount. They make more impact and have more free time without the endless meetings, annoying HR tasks, and repetitive questions. What if that could be you?
Your best team members are too smart to be replaced by AI. They're testing tools and figuring out how to outproduce. But the worst ones face a ticking time bomb, and they're probably aware. AI agents are the future, but the power can be in your team's hands.
ChatGPT can help you progress your best people and filter out the worst. Upskill together, for the benefit of your clients. Copy, paste and edit the square brackets in ChatGPT, and keep the same chat window open so the context carries through.
Transform your team with ChatGPT: the AI replacement playbook
Your underperforming team members know they are coasting. They are stuck in 2022 and hoping this will pass. It won't. But before you can replace anyone, you need to know exactly what they do all day. Business owners rarely know the specifics. They hired someone years ago and now that person does... stuff. It won't cut it. Get specific about every single task, every recurring responsibility, every output they create.
"Based on what you know about my business structure and goals from our previous conversations, help me audit a specific team member's role. Ask me questions about their daily tasks, weekly responsibilities, and monthly deliverables. For each duty I mention, probe deeper about the specific steps involved, time spent, and quality standards required. Once we have a complete picture, categorize these duties into three groups: tasks AI could do immediately, tasks AI can help with but require human oversight, and tasks that must remain human. Present this as a clear decision matrix."
Set standards for each workflow. Create rules. Content creation needs prompts, quality control guardrails and a proficient human editor. Customer service needs response templates and escalation triggers. Data entry needs validation checks. When I sold my agency, every single process had documentation that made it sellable and replaceable. Turn knowledge trapped in their heads into systematic processes.
"Using the duties we just identified, help me create detailed SOPs for the 3 most time-consuming tasks that AI could be involved in. Ask me to describe each process. Break them down into numbered steps that an AI agent could follow. Include decision points, quality checks, and specific outputs expected at each stage. Make each SOP so detailed that someone with no context (or an AI agent) could execute it perfectly. Start with the one that is the easiest to automate."
AI agent setup demands the right combination for each role, and the tool stack matters. Content creation might need specific tools working together. Customer service requires different integrations. Sales needs its own ecosystem. Stop thinking in individual tools. Start thinking in complete systems. Task your best team member with putting this in place and have them manage it. Progress their role to them running a team of robots.
"Based on the SOPs we've created and what you know about my business needs, identify the optimal AI tool stack for automating these processes. Suggest 3 different tool combinations for each major duty. Include estimated costs, integration requirements, and learning curves. Explain exactly how the tools would work together to replicate the human workflow. Prioritize solutions I can implement within 30 days."
There's a risk to automation and that's always been the case. Don't automate something key to your business success. Not yet. Start with lower risk areas. Get versed in making agents and go from there. Calculate the real cost of keeping a human versus switching. Include training time, error rates, scalability, and customer satisfaction. Don't remove headaches only to create new ones.
"Create a comprehensive risk/reward analysis for replacing this role with AI. Based on the duties and proposed solutions we've discussed, build a comparison table including: monthly cost (human vs AI), output capacity, error rates, customer impact, implementation time, and scalability potential. Score both options from 1 to 10 for each factor. Give me 3 specific metrics to track during a 30-day pilot program."
You have two options. Use AI to do less: hire fewer people, make the same money in less time. Or use it to do more and get your team onboard. Give everyone the task of 10xing their output. Tell them there's budget available if they make a case. When someone steps forward, support them. When someone isn't bothered, warn them it won't help their career. Only go forward with winners on your team.
"Based on what you know about my business philosophy and team structure from our conversations, design an AI adoption program that empowers rather than threatens my team. Create a 30-day challenge where each team member identifies one aspect of their role to enhance with AI. Include: communication strategies, department-specific goals, budget framework for tool requests, and recognition systems for early adopters. Draft sample messaging to launch this program."
Your AI transformation starts now: level up your business
AI isn't coming for your business. It's already here. Your best people will use it to become superhuman. Your worst people will be replaced by it. How fast can you adopt AI agents that do awesome work?
Get your best team members to do the research, then test AI agent platforms to start small and build big. Follow the recommendations ChatGPT gives you, and sign up for the agentic trials of your existing tools. Document everything. Test systematically. Scale what works. Make your AI agents work alongside your empowered humans. Make more impact with much less work.
Access all my best ChatGPT content prompts.