Picture the quarterly review where your operations lead puts one page on the screen. Before: five working days from signed agreement to an accepted handoff. Now: the same day. The numbers come from your own records, counted by your own people, so nobody in the room argues with them.
That page is how a team sees its own 10X. We 10X the ROI of your existing AI spend, and we want you to watch it happen in your numbers. An AI workflow is worth the difference between how the work runs today and how it runs once every person in the role uses it. Capture today before the first run, and that difference is yours to show.
Six measures, taken before the first run.
Most teams know roughly how long a piece of work takes. Roughly misses the waiting, the questions that bounce back and the checking nobody counts. Six measures catch it all.
- Elapsed time.From the trigger to the finished result, on the calendar. This is what your customer or the next team feels.
- Hands-on effort.The minutes people spend doing the work, by role. This is the capacity the workflow returns.
- Review.Who checks the result, against what, and for how long. Review stays with a person, so it stays on the worksheet.
- Rework.How often the result comes back with questions or corrections.
- Output quality.How many results meet the standard the owner wrote down. No written standard yet? Writing one is the first gain.
- Adoption.How many people in the role run the workflow on real work, and on what share of cases.
Two rules keep the worksheet trustworthy. Every number names its source: a date in a system, a count from a log, a timing someone took. And a number nobody has is written as unknown, with the way you will find it. A guess in its place looks exactly like a count.
Operations and IT fill it in together: operations owns the work and the standard; IT knows which systems hold the dates, counts and access list.
A baseline worksheet, filled in.
An invented 60-person software implementation firm is about to pilot the account handoff capability. When a client signs, the account executive hands client success what was sold, what was promised, who the contacts are and what the client expects first. The head of client success and the IT manager filled in the baseline from last quarter’s twelve handoffs and set the targets.
Illustrative example with invented data. An invented software implementation firm. The baseline is invented, and the target column is the firm’s aim, written before the first run. Nothing here is a measured result.
| Measure | Before: the baseline | Where the number comes from | Target with the workflow |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elapsed time | 5 working days from signed agreement to a handoff client success accepts (middle value of 12). | Signature date in the sales system; acceptance date in the project tracker. | Half a working day: accepted the day of signing. 10X. |
| Hands-on effort | 3 hours 20 minutes per handoff: 2 hours 30 minutes for the account executive, 50 minutes for the client success lead chasing missing details. | Timed on 4 handoffs over two weeks. The other 8 were not timed. | 20 minutes: the account executive checks and completes a prepared handoff. 10X. |
| Review | Unknown. The client success lead reads every handoff before accepting it; nobody has timed it, and no checklist exists. | To be timed on the next 4 handoffs before the pilot starts. | 15 minutes against a seven-item written checklist. The client success lead still accepts or returns every handoff. |
| Rework | 9 of 12 handoffs returned to sales with questions. How often a client was asked something they had already told sales: unknown. | Returned handoffs counted in the project tracker. Repeat questions: client success logs each one from now on. | 1 of 12 or fewer returned. No repeat questions to the client. |
| Output quality | 3 of 12 handoffs had all seven items the kickoff needs. | The client success lead scored last quarter’s 12 against the new checklist. | 12 of 12 complete, or the missing item named at the top. |
| Adoption | No shared method: each of the 5 account executives writes handoffs their own way. | Access list from the IT manager; runs counted in the project tracker. | All 5 account executives, on every new agreement. |
Two cells say unknown, each with its plan. Two targets are a clean 10X, chosen on purpose: ten times is the ambition. The pilot adds a fifth column, measured the same way from the same sources.
Your worksheet.
Copy it for one workflow. Count ten to twenty recent cases where records exist, time the next few where they don’t, and write unknown for the rest.
BASELINE WORKSHEET
Workflow: ___________________ Owner: ____________
Cases counted: ____ Period: ______________________
Cases a month: ____
BEFORE SOURCE TARGET
Elapsed time _________ _________ _________
(trigger to finished result)
Hands-on effort _________ _________ _________
(minutes per case, by role)
Review _________ _________ _________
(who, against what, how long)
Rework _________ _________ _________
(returned or corrected, of how many)
Output quality _________ _________ _________
(meet the written standard, of how many)
Adoption _________ _________ _________
(people in the role; share of cases)
Unknown today, and how we will find it:
__________________________________________________
Measured again on: ____________ By: ______________From six measures to what it is worth.
Each measure pays in its own currency. Elapsed time is felt by the client: a kickoff the week they sign. Effort is capacity: minutes per case, times cases a month. Rework and quality are the errors that never reach a customer. Adoption multiplies everything: a workflow two of five people use delivers two-fifths of the value. Installed, used or useful? shows how to read that row.
Convert to money once you have decided what the freed hours are for. Capacity becomes revenue, service or a cleared backlog when someone chooses. What will your team do with the capacity it gains? is the worksheet for that choice.
The baseline says where you started. Whether the workflow is ready to use is a separate proof: What we test before we call an AI workflow ready. Not picked the workflow yet? The AI subscription is paid for. Here’s how to 10X it defines one on a page, and this worksheet turns its last line, “Measured by the team”, into six numbers.
All of it runs on the platform you already have: ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini, at your pace, with your organization in control of how the work gets done.
Bring one workflow and whatever baseline numbers you have, unknowns included. We will show you what 10X looks like for it.