Season 5 - Episode 42: Can AI Fix What’s Already Broken?
AI makes it easier than ever to automate work. Reports can be generated faster, handover processes can be accelerated and repetitive tasks can be moved to agents.
But what happens if the work itself no longer creates value?
In this episode of Simply Briefed, Kristine Lium speaks with Lars Kvinge, founder and CEO of Vevd, about operational drag, organisational legacy and why companies need to understand what is actually slowing them down before adding another AI layer.
Together, they explore why the real AI opportunity may not only be about saving time or reducing cost, but about creating capacity for growth, complexity and what comes next.
Key topics in this episode
Why organisations build operational drag over time
How inherited tasks, reports and workarounds become part of “how we work”
Why automating the symptom can scale the problem
How to follow a problem upstream and find the root cause
Why mapping the real flow of work matters before redesigning it
How AI can help organisations move from efficiency to capacity
Why the fastest way forward may be to go deeper first
Episode 42: Can AI Fix What’s Already Broken?
– With Lars Kvinge, Founder and CEO of Vevd
This week’s episode
Before using AI to make your organisation faster, make sure you are accelerating the right things.
Most organisations do not become complex overnight. They evolve layer by layer. A new role is added, a new system is introduced, a report is requested and a workaround is created. Over time, temporary fixes can become part of how the organisation works.
Then AI arrives, and the natural instinct is often to add another layer: automate the report, make the handover faster or put an agent on the task. But if the underlying structure is inefficient, AI may not fix the problem. It may simply help the organisation scale the inefficiency.
Operational drag
In the episode, Lars describes this as operational drag: the friction that builds up when organisations keep carrying inherited tasks, outdated reporting, manual handovers and ways of working that are no longer questioned.
Often, the people doing the work are not the ones who created the process. They may not know who needs a report, why a task exists or whether the output is still used. They only know that it has become part of the job.
That is where drag builds. And when organisations grow, this drag can become harder to see. The work still gets done, but it takes more time, more coordination and more manual effort than it should.
Don’t automate the symptom
One of the central ideas in the episode is simple: before making a task faster, ask why the task exists in the first place.
Because sometimes the best automation is not automation at all. It is removing work that no longer creates value.
Lars gives the example of teams trying to process claims faster. On the surface, the problem looks like a workload issue: too many claims, too much manual follow-up and too much pressure at the end of the month. But when you follow the problem upstream, the real issue may be created much earlier in the process.
A small error in pricing, exchange rates or invoice data can move through several departments before it becomes a bigger problem later. In that case, the solution is not only to process the claim faster. It is to prevent the claim from being created in the first place.
See the real flow
You cannot redesign what you cannot see. That is why process mapping becomes important, not as a theoretical exercise, but as a way to understand how work actually moves through teams, systems and departments.
Where are bottlenecks created? Where does duplicate work happen? Where are people fixing problems that could have been prevented earlier?
Vevd uses AI voice agents to map how work flows through an organisation with less friction for employees. The aim is not only to document processes, but to reveal where value is getting stuck and where people, automation and AI should connect.
That changes the AI conversation. Instead of asking where AI can be added, organisations can ask what the flow should actually look like.
Organisation 2.0
A recurring question in the episode is: if we designed this organisation for what we want to achieve today, what should it look like?
That question matters because many organisations are still built around structures that made sense at another time. The systems were chosen for a previous reality, the roles were designed around older ways of working and the reports were created for people who may no longer be there.
AI gives organisations a chance to rethink that. Not necessarily by rebuilding everything at once, but by looking more carefully at what still creates value, what should disappear and where the organisation needs more capacity.
Efficiency vs capacity
The obvious value of AI is often time saved. But Lars argues that the bigger value may be capacity.
If an organisation removes friction, fixes root causes and reduces unnecessary work, it does not only become more efficient. It becomes better able to handle growth, complexity and change.
That is a different kind of AI opportunity. Not just lower cost. Not just faster output. But a stronger organisation that is better prepared for what comes next.
Going deeper in order to go faster
Going deeper does not have to mean launching a huge transformation project. It can start with one process.
Map the work, understand where the task comes from, look at the root cause, assess impact versus effort and then decide what should be removed, automated or redesigned.
The point is not to slow down progress. It is to make sure the organisation is moving faster in the right direction.
Because AI makes it increasingly easy to automate what we already do. The harder, and potentially more valuable, question is whether we should still be doing it that way at all.
Before adding another layer, zoom out. Understand what creates value, what creates drag and where the real friction sits.
Sometimes the fastest way forward is to go deeper first.
🎧 Listen now on Spotify!
Host: Kristine Lium
About the guest
Name: Lars Kvinge
Title: Founder and CEO of vevd.
Background: Lars has broad experience from the consulting and technology industry, with a background that includes PwC, Knowit and AFRY, as well as the financial sector through ABG Sundal Collier. He has led complex AI and data transformations and is particularly focused on connecting technology to growth and concrete business value.
In 2026 he founded Vevd, a company that helps businesses get ready to scale: freeing up capacity, automating where it pays off and upskilling teams to drive the change themselves.
Vevd has turned traditional process mapping and management consulting on its head. Using AI voice agents, it maps an entire department in just one week, with no post-it workshops and minimal friction for employees. Everything is delivered at a fixed price, with one goal: a positive return for the client within 12 months.
👉 Listen to the full episode of Simply Briefed to explore why the real AI opportunity may not be making work faster, but understanding what should be removed, redesigned or accelerated in the first place.
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