Operations and AI LLM Technology in 2025

Published: 2025-02-12
Updated: 2025-02-16
Author: Chuck Boecking
Discussion: https://team.chuck-stack.org/t/operations-and-technology-in-2025/76
Status: Released

Don't Just Survive - Thrive Beyond 2025

The purpose of this post is to provide a blueprint for operational efficiency and excellence in 2025 and beyond.

Here is the benefit story:

demonstrate how to quickly and easily leverage AI LLMs (large language models) to increase operational accuracy and precision
bring work instructions and documentation to life using free and off-the-shelf tools with minimal effort
help your people augment and automate processes using work instructions
give you a practical example of a company growing from 6 locations to 60 locations

It is important to note that I am a champion of small to medium organizations. You are my target audience. This post was written for you!

As a result of this article, you can:

Publish your work instructions and documentation to the web or local intranet
Give users a chat interface to understand their documentation
Provide workflow to easily update documentation
Ensure your chat (AI/LLM) always knows the current instructions

Problem Statements

Problem #1: People are generally not good at following directions with near perfect precision. We are creative, imaginative, and (as a result of these strengths) we are often distracted. These distractions sometimes result in mistakes when performing tasks.

Problem #2: People have a limited ability to hold information in their head when performing a task. Sometimes we need to look things up for reference.

Problem #3: It is often easier to ask for help than to find the answer yourself. Much of an organization's efficiency is lost because institutional knowledge is either not written down, it is located in an inconvenient location, or your organization has trained people to ask instead of self-help.

Problem #4: Finding information is not always easy even when you know where to look. Understanding the information after you find it can be even more difficult.

Problem #5: The current solutions for solving these problems can be very expensive. AI is an expensive marketing buzz word.

Quality Big Picture

Before we outline the solution, it is pivotal we see the big picture. Basic quality concepts are more important today than ever before. We cannot state this strongly enough!

Here are the foundations of any quality standard. If you do not currently have a quality manual, put these five bullets on a document and publish it everywhere. If you did nothing else, this would be an amazing start!

Say what you do
Do what you say
Prove you did it
Ask for feedback
Continually improve

We use organizational basics (like work instructions) to drive continuous improvement by deploying these instructions into our live systems. We expect everyone in the organization to improve them. With every improvement, the system evolves.

Point of reflection: if you are not willing to create the above one-page quality manual to drive your organization forward, do not bother reading further.

Create Training from Work Instructions

There is no better way than to simply show you what is possible when you write it down!

Here is an example where we create a job aid/visual from an existing work instruction document:

Here is an example where we create a training quiz from an existing work instruction document:

By using the US Constitution, we highlight the profound effect you can create by simply writing the instructions.

Work Instruction Vision and Goal

It will take a moment for people to get used to simply 'asking' your system for help. However, when they do, they will be surprised with the answers they get.

Were you aware that an LLM could create a visual job aid or an interactive quiz based on a work instruction? Just wait, it is about to get even more exciting.

Obsidian Plain Markdown Text

LLMs are large language models. They have an incredible ability to understand text. When you write your work instructions in 'text' (not Word or Google Docs) just plain text, you gain the ability to use any and every LLM in the world, and therefore, you gain the ability to use just about every tool.

Feedback Loop

Notes about organizational evolution through continual feedback:

Quality standards ask you for follow your own directions.
These standards ask that you prove you followed the standards released at the moment the action was performed.
Most standards do not dictate the velocity at which you evolve.
They simply request you ask for feedback and act accordingly.
They often do ask you to reflect on the impact of your changes.

In the above video, we use github.com to manage all changes. GitHub provides Git services. You might not be familiar with Git; therefore, it is worth discussing a few points to consider in a later conversation:

Git tracks every change by every member, and as a result, you can report on these changes.
Git allows for making changes in an off-to-the-side branch where you can stage, test and review changes before they are released.
Git gives your organization the power to articulate exactly how you want to manage change.

Tools and More

Said simply: LLMs help help you process more information, make better decisions, and execute more tasks with greater velocity.

Said with more detail:

An LLM is a neural network with the ability to predict what should 'be' next based on a given context.
It can help you solve many if not all the above problem statements.
Your success with LLMs depends on how you empower your roles to use LLMs to augment and automate many of the routine operations of your organization.

This video shows you an example of how you describe (in plain text) the steps of an operation, and it also shows how to instruct the LLM which tool accomplishes the task.

Next Steps

If you want help implementing these concepts in your organization, join the stack-academy. We will walk you though the process of:

deploying your first Obsidian + Git + website + chat solution in your organization
identifying and create your first set of work instructions for a target role
teaching your content writers how to write the fewest words possible to achieve the desired result
soliciting feedback from everyone after the initial deployment

Tools Summary

Here are the tools we use to minimize effort and maximize agency:

We use Obsidian to help your primary leaders 'say' what to do.
We use AIChat to
- deliver a kind and patient 'chat' experience
- evaluate user interactions with 'chat'
- propose improvements to work instructions
We use mdBook to publish our instructions
We use ttyd to expose AIChat and other tools
We use Netbird to ensure our work instructions and our tools are both private to our organization AND available to everyone in our organization

Example Company

This is a story of a chuck-stack member. Imagine yourself in their shoes.

You and your partner have spent over 10 year building a boutique retail professional services business. It took you a while and some nail-biting experiences; however, you finally settled into a good, repeatable and profitable business that has resulted in over 6 locations across multiple cities.

You have done such a good job, that private equity has purchased your business, and they have retained your services to help grow it to the next level (with significant oversight). Keep in mind:

The private equity firm is not a domain expert in your business; they rely on you as an expert.
The private equity firm has domain expertise is helping profitable businesses with reasonably management grow beyond owner-operator status.
As an owner-operator, you are comfortable running the entire business as you have done for more than a decade.
All critical and many non-critical decisions come from you.
You have an emerging business manager; however, this person's influence is subject to the historical norms of the 'ask the owner' MO.
What you do is complex enough that it takes professionals with over 10 years of education and experience to effectively deliver your services.

Now, your collective jobs are to grow the business 10x in about three years. Doing so successfully will profoundly impact the wealth of you and those around you. This means:

You location count will grow from 6 to about 60.
Your revenue will likely grow by more than 10x.
Your internal service departments (like accounting and IT) will grow from 1 to about 4.
Your customer's experiences will no longer be a direct result of your skills, knowledge, attitude or capacity to innovate.

Said another way, you must build a sustainable business that effectively removes you from its operational systems. If you do not, failure is the likely outcome.

There is a big difference between knowing what needs to be done and knowing how to accomplish the goal. Your entire existence to this day has been centered around you. You are being asked to change in a way that is completely foreign to your practicing norms.

This post is your blueprint for how to move forward. It is both the starting point and the platform to begin your journey. Your job has effectively changed. You must inject your style of critical thinking into the system without needing to actually answer questions directly.

Principles before Mission Vision Values

We are fans of understanding your "mission vision and values". We believe this knowledge represents an evolution in your ability to reliably deliver value to and extract profit from this world.

However, principles are paramount! Principles are the foundation and the rules by which you make decisions at every level. The better you communicate your principles, the better the organization can establish a decision making framework that is consistent with the value you provide the world.

We go down this path because inevitably, you will be asked a question about how to manage the business. You will be tempted to simply answer as you have always done. Instead, ask the question: "what is the principle; How do you make this decision"? If you or your people struggle to answer this question, you need to start writing your principles in your work instructions (roles, tasks, and tools).

You might provide inconsistent messages in the beginning. Or, you might wrestle with the priority of the respective principles. That is OK. You have most likely not needed to vocalize them before. However, you need to start... You need to try...

At some point, we will discuss the concept of "first things first". This phrase represents applying principles to strategy, but this is a topic of another day.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we need an LMS?

Maybe. Before you think about learning (LMS) or training systems, create your work instructions. Managers need to document roles. Users document tasks. Everyone documents tools.

Only after you have reached the point where your work instructions have reached 'live' status as demonstrated above, should you consider an LMS. Then, think critically about whether the learning/training system will slow you down or better your operations.