Four tools. One system. Real workflows at a high-net-worth insurance advisory practice.
Client conversations live in Gmail. Documents live in Google Drive. The system doesn't try to replace or duplicate any of that. Instead, it creates a lightweight coordination layer that answers two questions:
The Task — a routing slip that points to where the work lives across email, documents, and other systems.
The Work Unit — an advisory calculation about priority and timing that runs independently of human judgment.
No custom software. No expensive platforms. Four tools that most knowledge workers already have access to, wired together through a structured methodology.
Two linked tables — Tasks and Work Units — form the coordination layer. Tasks are routing slips pointing to where work lives. Work Units are the flight computer: date-driven formulas that compute priority independently of human judgment. No external scripts, no code — just native Airtable formulas running the escalation ladder, activation checks, and data hygiene enforcement.
Client conversations, carrier correspondence, internal threads — the actual substance of every engagement lives in email. The system doesn't replicate it. Every Task carries a unique Task Number that works as a search key: paste it into Gmail and land on the exact thread. Email is the source of truth for what happened. The system tells you what to do about it.
Quotes, proposals, policy documents, comparison spreadsheets — everything that isn't a conversation lives in a shared Drive organized by client last name. When a Task says "review the renewal options," the documents are one click away in a predictable location. No digging, no asking where things are filed. File naming convention: date ~ last name ~ description.
An AI assistant that operates across all three systems during structured work sessions. Pulls Airtable records, reads Gmail threads, searches Google Drive for documents, cross-checks human priorities against computed priorities, drafts Action Briefings, and updates fields. Claude is the Flow Manager — air traffic control that sees the full queue and surfaces conflicts. The human always has final authority.
Every work session follows the same loop. Claude reads the queue, pulls the relevant records and threads, and the human makes the decisions.
A typical task review: 5–15 minutes. The system pre-sorts the queue so the human spends time on judgment, not triage.
Filtered Airtable views surface what needs attention: Must Do items first (deadline pressure), then Should Do (review dates due), then parked items whose review date has arrived, then hygiene flags.
Does the Task's human-set priority agree with the Work Unit's computed priority? If they disagree, investigate. The disagreement is the signal.
Use the Task Number to search Gmail for the latest thread. Read what happened since the last review. Check Drive for any documents referenced.
Update the Task's Next Action and Review Date. Update the Work Unit's Action Briefing — the structured handoff note that tells anyone picking up the work exactly what to do next and why.
Every component of the system maps back to Mollick's delegation framework. The system doesn't replace management judgment — it gives that judgment a consistent structure.
None of these concepts require understanding Airtable, formulas, or AI. They require understanding delegation, oversight, and quality control — management fundamentals. The tools are interchangeable. The thinking is not.