No Wasted Motion: Choosing the First Workflow to Hand to AI

Landon Taylor, CEO of Snoball, played quarterback in a triple option offense at Lone Peak High School and later coached there. In the triple option, every step has a purpose. The quarterback reads the defense and makes a decision on each snap. There is no room for extra movement that does not advance the ball.

That idea gave its name to a recent AI working session Landon shared on LinkedIn: No Wasted Motion. Instead of talking about AI in general, the group ranked their recurring workflows by value, picked the top one, and built it live into a complete, end-to-end AI agent workflow.

That is a better starting point than most companies use. Here is how to apply it.

Key Takeaways

• Start with a list, not a tool: write down the recurring work your team does every week before choosing any AI product.
• Rank by value: score each workflow on frequency, cost, resources, and return.
• Build one end to end: finish the top workflow completely before starting a second.
• Keep people on judgment: hand AI the repeatable steps and keep humans on the decisions and relationships that matter most.
• Measure the result: track time saved and outcomes so the next choice is based on evidence.

The problem: lots of AI activity, little finished work

Home service companies are using AI more than ever. Jobber’s 2026 Home Service Trends Report found that 52% of the 1,050 owners surveyed use AI. Yet trust is low. A 2026 ServiceTitan survey of 1,017 trade businesses found only 11% place high or complete trust in AI tools, while 58% have little or no trust.

That gap makes sense. Most AI use is scattered: a prompt here, a draft email there, a trial of a new product nobody finishes setting up. Each experiment takes time, and few of them replace real work. The result feels like motion without progress.

If you are still sorting out what AI should even mean for your business, it helps to start with a clear view of what using AI actually means in a moving or home service company. The No Wasted Motion approach takes it one step further. It forces a choice.

Step 1: List the recurring workflows

Start with the work, not the technology. Gather the people who do the work and list every task that happens on a repeating schedule. Daily, weekly, and monthly all count.

In a moving company, that list might include quoting, booking confirmations, crew scheduling, claims follow-up, post-move check-ins, review requests, weekly reporting, and invoice reminders. Be specific. “Marketing” is not a workflow. “Writing the weekly job recap for the owner” is.

Step 2: Rank each workflow by value

The session ranked workflows on four factors. Score each from 1 to 5 and add them up.

• Frequency: how often does this happen? Daily work beats quarterly work.
• Cost: what does it cost today in wages, delays, or mistakes?
• Resources: how many people and hours does it take?
• Return: if it ran perfectly, what would the business gain?

The top of the list is usually not the flashiest idea. It is often a boring task that eats hours every week and creates problems when it slips. That is exactly the kind of work that pays back fastest.

Step 3: Build the top one end to end

This is where most companies fall short. They automate half of a workflow and leave a person to stitch together the rest. The time savings disappear in the handoffs.

End to end means the workflow runs from its trigger to its finished output. For a weekly report, that means pulling the data, summarizing it, flagging exceptions, and delivering it to the right person. Map every step on a whiteboard first. Then decide which steps AI handles, which a person reviews, and where the result goes.

A safe place to test helps. Some teams set up an AI sandbox for the team so people can build and break things without touching live customer data.

Step 4: Keep humans on the judgment calls

No Wasted Motion does not mean removing people. It means removing wasted effort so people can focus on the moments that need them.

Customer conversations are the clearest example. AI can help draft and organize, but a customer who replies with a question, a complaint, or a referral needs a thoughtful response from someone who understands the situation. That is why every customer reply needs a playbook built on approved language and real judgment. The machine can speed up the work. The relationship still belongs to a person.

At Snoball, that is how the team approaches referral conversations: technology helps real people move faster, and the people own every conversation.

Step 5: Measure, then pick the next one

Once the first workflow runs, track two things for a month: hours saved and outcome quality. Did reports go out on time? Did fewer tasks slip? Did the team use the saved time well?

Then go back to your ranked list and pick the next one. Each finished workflow builds skill and trust inside the team. That is how the trust gap in the survey data closes: not through more experiments, but through finished work people can see.

Your first move this week

Block one hour with the people who do the work. List every recurring workflow, score each on frequency, cost, resources, and return, and circle the top one.

Do not start a second project until that one runs end to end. Like a good triple option read, the goal is not more movement. It is the right movement, every time.