Most teams look at AI and ask, "what can this do?" It is a natural question and a poor starting point, because it pulls people toward grand, abstract ambitions — automate the department, transform the function — that stall the moment they meet a real workflow. The better question is smaller and far more useful: where in your own week would this actually help?
That is what MATCH is for. It is a framework from Dr. Jules White at Vanderbilt University for finding AI opportunities one workflow at a time, and it is one of the methods we teach and apply with teams.
Map a single workflow. Ask what AI could take on. Test it with real data. Capture what works. Habitualize the scanning.
Map a single workflow you run regularly — not your whole job, just one process. Ask what AI could take on within it. Test it with real data rather than a tidy example. Capture what works so the result is repeatable. Then Habitualize the scanning, so finding opportunities becomes routine rather than a one-off burst of enthusiasm. The discipline is starting small: one task, not "automate my whole job."
Take the weekly status report. Map the steps you actually take: gather updates, chase the stragglers, summarize, format. Ask where AI fits — most likely drafting the summary from your raw notes. Test it on last week's real inputs and see whether the output holds. Capture the prompt that worked. Then make running it a standing Friday Best Practice. One workflow, real time back, and a pattern you can now point at the next workflow, and the next.
MATCH is how a Trusted AI Culture grows from the bottom up, owned by the people doing the work rather than imposed from above. It is also the engine behind the opportunity backlog teams build in our workshop: dozens of small, tested, attributable wins instead of one stalled transformation program.
Next in the series: once you have found the work, the Briefing Pattern makes sure AI has the context to do it.
Build a Trusted AI Culture in your team. Explore the workshop.
Keep reading: The cost-to-check rule · The Briefing Pattern
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Source framework: Dr. Jules White, Vanderbilt University. Built on his prompt-patterns research; presented here in our own words.