The Intelligence Map

See every Work Center placed on a grid of Intelligence and Capability, with its classification and a ranked list of opportunities.

For: Any signed-in user can view; changes need the Hire Coworkers ability or admin · Last updated

The Intelligence Map shows how your company's work divides between people and AI Coworkers. Open Map in the top navigation to see it.

A Work Center is a coherent body of work with defined inputs and outputs, usually what a role or team does, such as renewal benchmarking. The map places every Work Center on two axes:

  • Intelligence is the judgment and interpretation the work takes.
  • Capability is the execution: drafting, formatting, calculating and producing the result.

Each axis is either reducible (AI can take it on) or irreducible (it needs a person).

Who can view and who can change#

Everyone who is signed in can open the map, see every Work Center, and read the recorded Shadow AI usage. Creating or editing a Work Center, running the Irreducibility Test, scoring an opportunity, recording Shadow AI and running the quarterly refresh all need the hire_coworkers ability (Hire Coworkers in Settings) or the admin ability. If you try one of these without the ability, you see a message saying it requires that ability and nothing is saved.

If your map is empty#

A company with no Work Centers sees Set up your Intelligence Map. It offers two starting points:

  • Start the 2-hour mapping session opens the guided session, which takes you through the whole exercise in order.
  • Define a Work Center opens the Work Center form so you can add one directly.

The grid#

Once at least one Work Center exists, the page is titled The grid and shows four quadrants. The classification of a Work Center is the quadrant it sits in.

Classification Intelligence Capability What it means
Retain irreducible irreducible A person is genuinely required on both sides. Accept that cost and defend it clearly.
Redesign irreducible reducible The judgment stays with a person; the work around it can move to AI, so the person does the same irreducible work more often.
Eliminate reducible reducible Both sides can move to AI. Only habit keeps people here.
Recheck reducible irreducible This combination almost never occurs in practice. Look again at both answers.

Retain is a protected outcome: it is a deliberate decision, not a backlog item.

Each Work Center appears as a card in its quadrant with:

  • Its name and its team, or No team.
  • A line starting Lives in, if you recorded where its intelligence lives, followed by how documented and how transferable it is (for example "well-documented · tied to the person").
  • A classification label: retain, redesign, eliminate or recheck, or Unclassified.
  • The Coworker assigned to it, shown as an arrow and the Coworker's name, when there is one.
  • Edit, and Run Irreducibility Test (Re-run Irreducibility Test once it is classified).

A Work Center that has not been through the Irreducibility Test is placed using the starting answers you gave when you defined it, and is marked Unclassified. An empty quadrant says that no Work Centers sit there.

The opportunity list#

Under the grid, the Opportunity list table has one row per Work Center, with the columns Work Center, Team, Stakes, Cadence, Classification, Owner and Next step.

The list is ordered so the next opportunities come first:

  1. Opportunities: Work Centers with no Coworker, at least one reducible axis and a classification other than Retain or Recheck, Redesign ones first.
  2. Work Centers that already have a Coworker.
  3. Everything else, including protected work.

Retain and Recheck Work Centers never count as opportunities. The Owner column shows Coworker: and the Coworker's name, or — unassigned. The Next step column shows:

  • Score this opportunity →, which opens the Opportunity Scorecard.
  • deployed, when a Coworker already has the work.
  • protected by design, for a Work Center that is neither an opportunity nor assigned.

Other sections on the map#