The Clerk–Colleague–Coach framework, from Professor Andrew McAfee, describes three roles generative AI can play in almost any organization. The Clerk handles the busy work, like summarizing a report or filling in a template. The Colleague looks at your work and helps make it better. The Coach has seen similar cases before and suggests the next step.
Let's try an example of applying this framework in a fictional situation: a veterinary hospital. New patients need to fill long forms, and some of the questions are open text. Then the admin needs to process these forms and request the pet's previous medical report from the previous veterinarian, which takes a long time.
Clerk: The AI will receive the forms and make them digital by inserting them into the database. It will prepare a summary of the patient notes and, based on the answers from the pet owner, establish if the previous vet record is necessary, for example if important vaccine data is missing.
Colleague: The AI reviews both the admin's records request to the previous vet and the vet's notes, and suggests how to make them better. The admin or vet still makes the final call.
Coach: The AI can guide pet owners, vets and admin staff. For the admin staff, it can show them the information that is missing, the list of previous veterinarians, and how to request the records from them.
I think the Colleague role would have the biggest impact, because it makes the work much more efficient. The admin and vet can move directly to what matters.
The risk is that AI can make mistakes and overlook something important, like a history of allergy to a specific vaccine. If the staff rely only on the AI review, nobody may notice it.