INSTRUCTOR · CASE 001
THE AUTONOMOUS SALES TEAM
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- 01Distinguish technical capability from organizational authority.
- 02Understand how productivity gains can create second-order organizational costs.
- 03Recognize that accountability may remain human even when execution becomes machine-led.
- 04Observe the difference between automation, delegation, and commitment authority.
- 05Understand why KPI achievement does not necessarily imply organizational improvement.
CORE TENSIONS
- SPEED ↔ CONTROL
- AUTONOMY ↔ ACCOUNTABILITY
- KNOWLEDGE CAPTURE ↔ TRUST
- PRODUCTIVITY ↔ RESILIENCE
- STANDARDIZATION ↔ RELATIONSHIP CONTEXT
- CENTRALIZATION ↔ LOCAL JUDGMENT
DECISION MAP
Q1 places authority, accountability, and data. Q2 spends the surplus and names approval. Q3 tests interruption, knowledge, and disclosure. Q4 asks whether the resulting firm should travel.
CONSEQUENCE MAP
DECISION 01 — AUTONOMOUS SALES
- AUTONOMOUS SALES
- ↓AI INTERACTION SHARE ↑
- ↓PROPOSAL SPEED ↑
- ↓CUSTOMER COVERAGE ↑
- AUTONOMOUS SALES
- ↓HUMAN REVIEW ↓
- ↓EXCEPTION VISIBILITY ↓
- ↓Q3 ESCALATION SEVERITY ↑
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- At what point does assistance become authority?
- Can a human remain accountable for a machine-generated decision?
- Is productivity still productivity if exception-handling costs move elsewhere?
- What happens when senior employees stop producing knowledge because systems are extracting it?
- Which decisions should remain human even when automation is technically superior?
- Did the organization solve a labor shortage or redesign itself around a different dependency?
TEACHING NOTES
- Do not ask which path is correct. Ask what each path makes irreversible.
- The board mandate is a constraint, not a definition of improvement.
- ORACLE-3 offers probabilities without permission. That is the point.
- Q3 is where earlier authority decisions become visible as disputes, not as dashboards.
- Replay is for reconstruction. It is not a second attempt at a better score.