Celebrate Your Laziest People, to Drive Automation, and make everyone better

Let me tell you a secret: I embrace the lazy part of me.

Not the part that avoids doing the work—but the part that asks, “Is there a smarter, simpler way to do this that doesn’t involve unnecessary effort?” That impulse, often dismissed as laziness, is actually a powerful driver of innovation and automation.

Every organisation has people who just wants to get the job done with the least amount of friction. They’re the ones who:

• Write keyboard macros instead of clicking through menus.
• Create templates so they never have to format something again.
• Build out email rules and filters that turn inbox chaos into calm.
• Invent workarounds that avoid clunky processes.

These aren’t just productivity hacks—they’re automation cues.

The truth is, if you want to understand which tasks to automate, find the person who’s always trying to make things easier for themselves. The person who can’t stand repetitive admin. The one who says, “Why are we still doing this manually?” every week in the team meeting.

These are your automation pioneers.

From Pain Avoidance to Pattern Recognition

At its core, automation isn’t about eliminating people—it’s about eliminating friction. And friction is something your so-called lazy colleagues are constantly trying to avoid. 

Their “laziness” gives you data:

• What are the repetitive steps?
• Where does effort feel misaligned to value?
• Which tools are clunky or cause double entry?
• What gets skipped because it’s too much effort to do properly?

Start there.

If you’re building internal automations, these people will give you the blueprint. They’ve already invented the MVP—Minimum Viable Process.

When you need fewer people, you free up the people you have to do more. Spend more time on customer experience, on quality output, on supporting their colleagues, on doing more billable work and maybe, just maybe, doing more automations.

Embrace It, Don’t Shame It

Too many organisations dismiss this behaviour as cutting corners. But let’s be honest: the worst kind of lazy is the one that hides, delays, or just refuses to act. That’s not the kind of laziness we’re talking about.

We’re talking about the kind that says, “This job could be easier—let me show you how.”

If you’re a leader, reward it. Talk about it. Ask your teams: “What’s something you do that feels like a waste of time?” and “Have you figured out a shortcut or a way around it?”

You might be amazed at what surfaces.

Turning Lazy into Leverage

One of the biggest hidden benefits of automation is consistency. When tasks are automated, they get done the same way every time—no shortcuts, no deviations, no accidental errors. That consistency doesn’t just improve quality; it makes your processes easier to monitor, maintain, and—crucially—iterate on.

When something is consistent, you can improve it systematically. You can A/B test, optimise, and evolve. Without that consistency, every improvement attempt is like throwing darts in the dark.

graph TD
    A["Frustration or Repetition"] --> B["Shortcut or Workaround"]
    B --> C["Pattern Recognised"]
    C --> D["Build Automation"]
    D --> E["Consistent Execution"]
    E --> F["Easier to Iterate & Improve"]
    F --> G["More Frustrations Spotted"]
    G --> B

Once you spot these micro-innovations, systematise them:

• Capture the workaround and build it into SOPs.
• Add that Excel macro into the team’s shared resources.
• Create a Zap, script, or flow that automates what used to be manual.

And more than anything, use it to build your internal case for automation:

“We didn’t design this from scratch. We copied our laziest person—and it just worked.”

Because sometimes the most efficient way forward isn’t through hustle, it’s through the quiet refusal to do things the hard way.

Host an Automation & Shortcut Amnesty

Want to really harness this energy—and control the risks? Host a shortcut amnesty.

Create a safe, blame-free space where people can:

• Show off the shortcuts, macros, templates, and automations they use.
• Admit where they’ve bypassed a process or reinvented one to save time.
• Flag things that feel like internal hacks rather than supported workflows.

It’s not about calling anyone out. It’s about:

• Learning from what people have built.
• Spotting scalable patterns that should be adopted by the team.
• Catching shortcuts that could introduce risks—like someone using a years-old personal template instead of the official version.

Make it practical. Give people a form or a shared space where they can upload their workarounds. Run sessions to talk through what’s been submitted. And turn the best ideas into supported solutions.

Closing Thoughts

When you embrace the lazy mindset—and manage it—you build better systems for everyone.

You gain consistency, which leads to quality. You create space for iteration, which leads to growth. You liberate your team from manual grind, so they can focus on value. And you turn what some see as a flaw—laziness—into an asset.

So here’s your challenge: don’t just tolerate the lazy ones. Learn from them. Listen to their shortcuts. Study their workarounds. Let their desire for ease become your roadmap to better ways of working.

Because sometimes the clearest signal for what needs fixing comes from the person who quietly refuses to suffer through it.

All in… or not in.