Put approval before money or public words leave

There's a simple line worth drawing in any automated process: anything touching money or anything the public will see gets a human check first. Everything leading up to that point can run on its own.

The goal is to match the size of the risk to the size of the safeguard. A workflow that drafts an invoice, prepares a social post, or fills out a refund request can save real time even if a person reviews the final version before it goes out. I've watched people make this same mistake in both directions, either approving nothing and letting risky steps run wild, or approving everything and losing the whole point of automating in the first place.

Draw that line once, clearly, and let everything on the safe side of it run without you.

Try this today: mark every step in one workflow as either "safe to run alone" or "needs a look first," and add a pause at the first step that needs one.