# Capacity Destination Mapping Worksheet

Use this before automating work with AI.

The aim is not just to save time. The aim is to decide what better work becomes possible when time, attention, and coordination load are freed.

## 1. Team Context

Team:

Date:

Facilitator:

People contributing:

Primary team purpose:

Current pressure points:

## 2. Current Activity Map

List recurring activities the team currently does.

| Activity | Owner/role | Frequency | Time/effort | Current tool/process | Pain level 1-5 | Notes |
|---|---|---:|---:|---|---:|---|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |

Prompts:

- What work happens every day, week, month, or reporting cycle?
- What work is mostly copying, summarising, checking, routing, chasing, drafting, formatting, reconciling, or updating?
- What work depends on one person remembering how it is done?

## 3. Friction And Waste Map

Identify work that is slow, duplicated, error-prone, delayed, invisible, or annoying.

| Activity | What makes it painful? | Impact | AI/automation potential 1-5 | Risk if automated 1-5 | Candidate for improvement? |
|---|---|---|---:|---:|---|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |

Friction types:

- Waiting for information
- Rewriting the same thing
- Searching across email/docs/chats
- Manual data entry
- Repetitive customer/member replies
- Reporting and status updates
- QA/checking/review bottlenecks
- Handover gaps
- Follow-up that gets forgotten
- Work that senior people do because no one else has context

## 4. Suppressed Value List

List valuable work the team is not doing, or not doing enough, because there is not enough time, attention, confidence, process, or tooling.

| Suppressed work | Why it matters | Why it is not happening now | Who benefits if it happens? | Value 1-5 | Urgency 1-5 |
|---|---|---|---|---:|---:|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |

Useful categories:

- Better customer/client/member follow-up
- Proactive outreach
- More consistent documentation
- Better onboarding/training
- Process improvement
- Quality assurance
- Better reporting and insight
- Knowledge capture
- Relationship-building
- Coaching and mentoring
- Risk/compliance checking
- Experimentation and innovation
- Cleaning up old systems/data/content
- More thoughtful planning

Prompt:

If the team had an extra 5 hours per week, what would be the first genuinely useful thing to improve?

If it had an extra 20 hours per week, what would become possible?

## 5. Capacity Destination Map

For each possible AI/automation improvement, define where the saved capacity should go.

| AI/automation candidate | Estimated capacity freed | Capacity destination | Business outcome | Human outcome | Owner |
|---|---:|---|---|---|---|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |

Capacity destination examples:

- Faster response times
- More proactive follow-up
- Better quality checks
- Less overtime
- Better onboarding
- More time with customers/clients/members
- More analysis and learning
- More senior support for junior staff
- Reduced key-person dependency
- Better documentation and handovers
- More experimentation

## 6. Role Evolution Statement

For each affected role, write what the role becomes more able to do.

| Role | Work AI may reduce | Work the role can do more of | Skills to develop | Guardrails needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |

Template:

If AI reduces time spent on **[current work]**, this role can spend more time on **[higher-value work]**, creating **[customer/team/business benefit]**.

Example:

If AI reduces time spent drafting routine status updates, the team lead can spend more time coaching staff, clearing blockers, and improving handovers, creating faster delivery and less rework.

## 7. Prioritisation

Score each candidate.

| Candidate | Value 1-5 | Ease 1-5 | Trust/risk readiness 1-5 | Capacity destination clarity 1-5 | Priority |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |

Priority guidance:

- Start with high-value, low-risk, clearly bounded work.
- Avoid automating work where no one can say what freed capacity should become.
- Do not start with sensitive customer-facing, legal, financial, medical, employment, or public communications unless approvals and review gates are clear.

## 8. Adoption Risks

What might make staff reluctant?

| Concern | Who may feel it? | Why it is rational | Response/commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job loss |  |  |  |
| More work volume |  |  |  |
| Loss of control |  |  |  |
| Quality risk |  |  |  |
| Being judged for experimentation |  |  |  |

Commitment statement:

We are using AI to make room for **[named higher-value work]**, not just to make people produce more with less context.

## 9. First 30-Day Experiments

Choose 1-3 small experiments.

| Experiment | Team owner | Start date | Success measure | Review date | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |

Success should measure both:

- Time/friction reduced
- Better work made possible

## 10. Final Summary

Top current friction:

Top suppressed-value opportunities:

First AI/automation candidates:

Where freed capacity will go:

Roles that need support:

Guardrails required:

Decision:

- Proceed
- Clarify capacity destination first
- Needs leadership decision
- Not suitable for AI/automation yet