What Business Automation Gets Wrong About Human Judgment

Automate, automate, and then automate some more. We’ve all heard it countless times. 

The more business processes you automate, the less human error you have. Data leads the way, and you can focus on growing your business and improving your skills. Those tedious tasks are now off your plate. 

The catch is, automation isn’t perfect. It’s designed to follow clear rules, and it does an excellent job at doing so. But it can’t read the room. It can’t notice that your client is hesitating or weighing an ethical gray area. 

Should you ditch technology then? 

Absolutely not, because where would you be without it? And not just you, where would we all be without it? Still, it’s important to be aware of technology’s limitations, and you have to realize that there are some situations that will always depend on human judgment. 

No algorithm will ever be able to replace it. 

Where Automation Delivers Real Business Value

Automation isn’t the villain here, so let’s get out of the way right now. It’s a fantastic, powerful tool, and the world would look very different (not in a good way!) without it. 

But keep in mind that you can’t really use it for everything, and if you want to use it well, you need to know exactly what it’s good at. 

Automation can’t be your strategist, but it can be the best, most tireless assistant there ever was. 

Automation is consistent, so when you give it steps to follow, it will do that perfectly. If the same thing needs to be done millions of times in a row, no problem, it will do it without getting distracted or tired. 

That’s a massive value for a business. 

Take a look at any task that’s repetitive and high in volume. Could a human do it? Sure, but they’d make a ton of mistakes, no matter how brilliant they are. In a situation like this, automation objectively outperforms any human anywhere. 

Unlike a human, automation can give you a 100% guarantee that every single thing will be done exactly the same way, every time. 

And there’s your biggest difference. Automation is focused on doing the job correctly, not on making quality decisions. The decision part has to be made by a human, and it was already made when they designed the rule. 

So, long story short, when you have a clearly defined task, automation will do a fantastic job. If it’s anything predictable or routine, technology is your best friend, and they’ll do it far better than you could. 

And if you don’t confuse the ‘flawless execution’ with ‘understanding’, you’ll get all the good parts of automation and none of the frustrating ones.

Where Automation Breaks Without Human Judgment

Now you know where automation does great. Where does it go wrong then? 

The problem isn’t that the technology is broken; it’s us, humans. 

We’re the issue here because of the fact that we tend to place our trust where we shouldn’t. If you expect a system to handle things that need a human mind, what can you get besides a problem?

There’s no manual for running a business. In order to do it successfully, you need to be able to read between the lines and make a call even when there’s no obvious perfect answer. 

Take marketing, for example. 

An automated system can score a lead based on their actions and give them top marks for downloading a few guides. But can it tell if the person is a serious buyer? No. For all it knows, it’s just a student collecting data for a report; it makes no difference. 

Without a person involved, there’s no way to see a red flag or hear a nuance. 

Content is the same thing.

There are a huge number of tools you can use to check your grammar and/or keywords. Technically, you CAN write a top-notch article. But in practice, the entire article, while it does look great ‘on paper’ (no pun intended), might miss the point entirely and could end up feeling hollow.

Is this possible? Sure. 

But is it also good? Well, no. Not really. 

When in doubt, just remember this – humans write for humans. Machines write for machines. 

This gap gets even bigger when you bring partners or outsourced teams into the picture. You look at a dashboard and see green lights – tasks done, reports in.

But someone has to look at what’s actually delivered. 

Something like white label link building, for instance, can be automated to handle the tracking and scheduling.

Link building is often looked at as a numbers game – and while that might be an oversimplification, it can still be automated to some extent. Why, to some extent? Well, links don’t just pass on authority; they also signal trust/relevance, which is why context matters. And while automation is more quantity over quality, a dedicated link-building agency will provide you with quality over quantity, which is more likely to bring more tangible results. 

Basically, even if you automate the entire process, you’d still need a human to judge if those links are coming from places that make sense for your brand.

Conclusion

There’s no reason to choose between humans and machines. 

That won’t get you anywhere because your business needs both. So the thing to take away from all this is that you should stop expecting a machine to do the thinking for you. Nobody can match automation when it comes to organizing, structuring, and following scripts. 

But when things get weird? 

That’s all yours.

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