The front door and the 10-day answer

Sooner or later, everyone who uses AI at work wants something. A fix for a step that drives them mad. Credit for a tool they built at the weekend. A budget for something they saw in a demo. The front door is the one place all of it arrives, and the place where all of it gets an answer. This lesson sets yours up, and lets you practise the answers.

Anyone can raise anything

The front door takes three kinds of thing, from anyone in the organisation:

• A friction point: work that waits, piles up or gets redone.
• A tool someone has already made, often with AI, often without asking first.
• A request: “can we have…”, usually for a tool or a budget.

They come through one door because they're often the same problem seen from different sides. The friction point is the cause, the request is someone's proposed fix, and the tool is someone else's fix that already works. One person looking at all three can see that a request from sales and a spreadsheet in finance are answers to the same question.

Whatever is raised, it's recorded as work, never as a person. “Quotes wait three days for pricing” is useful. “The estimator is slow” is a complaint about a colleague, and it teaches everyone else to stop raising things.

A first answer within 10 working days

The person who runs the loop gives a first answer within 10 working days. In a small firm, the outside builder of record does it. A first answer isn't a finished build. It's a decision about which path the thing takes, given to the person who raised it.

Ten days is a service level, and it's measured. The pilot kit records the time from raising something to its first answer, and reports the median every two weeks alongside the split of adopt, park and build. If the median goes over 10 working days, that counts against the framework at your size, and the day-90 readout says so plainly.

Three answers

There are only three first answers, and each has a rule.

• Adopt it. This is the default for something someone already made, and the maker gets the credit, out loud. If it's shared, it goes to Own, which module 7 covers, for an owner, a backup and a review date.
• Park it. It goes on the friction list, with a status everyone can see: new, in progress, parked or done. Parked isn't a polite no. It's visible, it's recorded as work, and it's there when the bottleneck moves.
• Build it. Only once redesigning the work and the approved tools have both been ruled out. Then it goes to Build's one-page case, which lesson 3 covers.

Notice what isn't a build. Setting up an approved tool to do something new, with no new money or engineering time, counts as Improve. Plenty of good requests end there.

What a first answer sounds like

A first answer names the path, says why, and says what happens next, in a couple of sentences. “Adopted, and thank you. Three people rely on it, so it goes to Own, and its owner will be in touch this week.” “Parked. It's real friction, but this loop's bottleneck is pricing review. It's on the friction list, and it comes back when the bottleneck moves.” “Going to Build. Redesign and the approved tools can't close the gap, so a one-page case goes to the quarterly meeting.”

Every answer goes back to the person who raised it, and into the log, with the date. The log is what lets you report the median, and it's what people will look at to decide whether the door is worth using.

That's why adopting is the default. The people already using AI on their own work have found where the friction is, and often built something that helps. Adopting it, with credit, costs almost nothing. Rebuilding it from scratch costs time, and tells everyone that showing their work gets it taken away.

A slow door builds shadows

A slow door doesn't stop people solving their problems. It stops them telling you. When a request waits for the next quarterly meeting, the person who raised it can live with the friction for three months, or fix it themselves with whatever they can find. Plenty choose the second. That's how organisations end up with tools nobody owns, running on data nobody checked.

Policies help. A door that answers fast helps more, because it gives people a better option than the shadows. Module 3 brought existing AI use into the open under the promises. The front door keeps it there.

Setting yours up

A front door needs three decisions: where things are raised, who answers, and how fast. Use somewhere people already go, such as a channel in your team chat, a short form or one email address. Below about 20 people, the door can be a standing item in a meeting you already hold.

In a large organisation, each business unit runs its own door, with its own person answering within the same 10 working days. Anything that touches legal, security or procurement goes to a shared-services loop within those same 10 days, and duplicates across units are merged, with credit to whoever made it first.

Practise the first answer

The rules are simple. Applying them on a busy Tuesday is harder. Here are six requests of the kind that arrive in the first month. Give each one its first answer.