Work Done Twice

Sound familiar?

• Work falls between two people at the handover and nobody goes looking for it.
• The process lives in a long-serving person's head and leaves when they do.
• A metric goes up on the board and the whole team optimises the wrong way.
• The same error repeats monthly and is handled each time with a reminder.

Each chapter answers one question

1. Chapter 1: Everyone did their part, so why did work fall through?

   How many people does a customer request pass through, and where does it wait longest?

   Work rarely gets dropped while being done; it gets dropped when passed from one person to the next.

2. Chapter 2: When your best person leaves, does the process leave too?

   How long does a newcomer need to do this task correctly without asking anyone?

   A process that lives only in a veteran's head disappears when they leave.

3. Chapter 3: The number improved, but did the work?

   What is the metric on my board making people do differently?

   Measure the wrong metric and the whole team optimises perfectly in the wrong direction.

4. Chapter 4: Third time the same mistake: still the person's fault?

   Which error happens every month, and who last fixed its cause?

   When the same error happens a third time, it is no longer about the person doing the work.

5. Chapter 5: Will automation fix the mess, or just speed it up?

   Is this process stable yet, or am I about to automate a mess?

   Automating a messy process only produces mess faster.