Use this checklist when the team feels busy but work still stalls, customers ask for updates, or the owner keeps becoming the routing system for the business.
Check a statement only when it happens often enough to affect a customer, consume repeated staff time, or make the business depend on memory.
Take it to the team
Print the two-page worksheet.
Mark it individually first, then compare answers. Disagreement about where work breaks is useful diagnostic information.
Demand and intake
- New inquiries can sit for a full business day without an owner.
- Customers submit the same information more than once.
- The team cannot see every open inquiry in one place.
- Urgent requests and normal requests enter through the same unranked queue.
Ownership and handoffs
- Work regularly waits because the next owner is unclear.
- A handoff depends on someone remembering to send a message.
- Two people sometimes assume the other person handled the same task.
- Customers must ask for status because nobody owns the update.
Systems and data
- The same information is typed into two or more systems.
- Different files show different answers for the same order, customer, or job.
- A spreadsheet has become a database, workflow, dashboard, and audit trail at once.
- Only one person knows how an important tracker or tool works.
Exceptions and rework
- The team fixes the same preventable mistake every week.
- Exceptions are handled in private messages instead of the operating system.
- A bad input can travel several steps before anyone catches it.
- People create side spreadsheets because the main process cannot handle real work.
Capacity and visibility
- The busiest person is also the approval point for routine work.
- Leaders learn about delays after a customer or employee complains.
- The team measures completed work but cannot see aging work in progress.
- Adding customers creates proportionally more admin instead of more output.
How to read the result
The total score matters less than the pattern.
- Checks concentrated in one section: the business probably has a specific workflow problem worth mapping end to end.
- Checks across ownership, systems, and exceptions: the process may have grown without one operating design. Fixing a single tool will not be enough.
- Different answers from different roles: the handoffs are not visible to everyone who depends on them.
- Nearly everything checked: choose the customer-facing workflow with the highest cost of delay. Do not launch a company-wide transformation.
Choose the first fix
Circle the three checked statements that create the most customer pain, cash delay, rework, or dependence on one person. If they belong to the same workflow, map that workflow first.
For each step, record the input, owner, action, system, decision, exception, output, and next owner. The bottleneck usually appears as waiting, duplicate entry, missing information, repeated approval, or an exception nobody designed for.