Worked example
Anya’s Audit, Step by Step
Anya is forty-five and has run the finance team of a mid-sized trading company for nine years. A tool now produces the monthly accounts she used to build by hand, which is the one task her title describes. She is the third worked example in Chapter 6 of the book, and the one for readers in the middle of a career. There is no film for Anya yet; her completed Audit and her Ninety-Day Plan are shown below exactly as they appear in the book, and every step is written out.
What Anya Entered, Step by Step
Your Stage
Mid-career or later. The stage changes the examples and the advice, not the method.
Your Tasks
Anya lists what she actually does in a normal week, with rough hours for each: 45 hours in all.
Task Hours a week Room today Note Monthly accounts and board pack 10 1. Hand It OverRoom 1 Checking what the tool produces 4 2. Harness ItRoom 2 Cash forecasting 5 2. Harness ItRoom 2 Managing a team of fiveCore 8 3. Hold ItRoom 3 Core Audit, bank and tax adviserCore 6 3. Hold ItRoom 3 Core Disputes over money 4 3. Hold ItRoom 3 Analysis for the MDCore 5 2. Harness ItRoom 2 Core System and process changesMay move to Room 1 3 2. Harness ItRoom 2 May move to Room 1 The Rooms
Each task gets two questions. Can AI do it well today? Does the world insist a person owns it? Only the monthly accounts and board pack land in Room 1, Hand It Over, but that is the task her title is built on. Checking the tool’s output, cash forecasting, analysis for the MD and system changes land in Room 2, Harness It. Managing the team, the audit, bank and tax adviser, and disputes over money land in Room 3, Hold It, because someone has to sign, and the bank and the auditors insist it is a person. For tasks in Rooms 2 and 3 the Audit asks one more question about the next three years. Anya puts a question mark over system and process changes.
Your Core
The work people most value her for: the bank and the auditors trust her signature, the managing director asks her before deciding anything with a number in it, and the team stays because of her. All of it is in Rooms 2 and 3.
Your Edges
A score from 1 to 5 on each of the four edges that stay valuable as the tools improve.
- Judgement: 5 of 5
- Taste: 3 of 5
- Trust: 5 of 5
- Reach: 2 of 5
Your Direction
The person who controls what the tools produce and answers for it, known outside this company as well as inside. Three tasks in that work, all in Room 2: Signing off the automated close, owning the cash forecast, and advising the MD on any decision with a number in it.
Your Page
- Room 1 work takes 10 of her 45 hours a week, or 22 per cent. If her question mark over system changes proves right, that rises to 29 per cent in three years. The count is small; what it means is not, because the ten hours are the job her title describes.
- Her valuable core is in Rooms 2 and 3, and her edge score is 15 of 20, the highest of the three examples.
- She chooses Reach as the edge to build next. In her words: “Everything I am trusted for is known to one employer.”
- Her first Shift: Propose and run the sign-off control for the automated close, and move two of the team’s returned hours a day to the forecast.
Anya’s Ninety-Day Plan
Chapter 16 of the book turns each Audit into a plan of six lines and three checkpoints. Anya’s is below. By day 30 the control is agreed and running on that month’s close; by day 60 the first conversation with a counterpart outside the company has happened and two hours a day go to the forecast; by day 90 she has written a one-page note on what the automated close got wrong and how it was caught, given it to the auditors, and redone the Audit.
See the other worked examples: Priya, at school, and Dan, early in his career.