g@gideonjr.comI inspect and rebuild the workflows small organizations run on.
Most of it is held in somebody’s head. I get it out, write down what is actually happening, and rebuild what is costing you.
You probably recognise at least one of these
One person knows how it actually works
The real procedure is in somebody's head, and the written one is out of date. When they are away, the work slows or stops.
You bought the tool and nobody uses it properly
It was configured once, for a way of working that has since moved on. Half the team has a spreadsheet running alongside it.
It falls over between people
Each step works. The handoffs are where things get lost, repeated, or quietly dropped, and nobody owns the gap.
You have a number but you do not trust it
Something reports on this workflow. You could not say what it counts, or whether it has been right for a while.
The work is in the wrong place
It lives in email, or a chat thread, or a document that four people edit. Not because anyone chose that, but because it started there.
You automated it and it got worse
Something that needed a person's judgment was handed to a rule or a model, and now the exceptions cost more than the work used to.
An operator’s judgment is the asset. The software is a rented envelope.
Some of what your team does could run itself. Some of it only looks like judgment and can be written down as a rule. And some of it is genuinely a person deciding, and has to stay that way. Most people cannot tell the three apart, so they either automate too much or hand back a configurable tool with a blank config. Telling them apart is the work. The tool that ends up running the result is a purchasing decision, and it is replaceable.
How an engagement goes
Plan
I watch a real instance of the work, map it, and write down what is actually happening—including the parts nobody has written down. You get an inspection report at the end of this whether or not you hire me for anything else.
Execute
Build the smallest thing that carries those rules. Sometimes that is software. Often it is configuration, an integration, or deleting a step. Doing nothing is a legitimate answer and I will tell you when it is the right one.
Review
Measure it against a baseline we agreed was real, and hand it over with what your people need to run it. If you still need me afterwards, something went wrong.
Nothing gets proposed until the baseline is either validated or declared broken with its repair scoped as work. A number that looks like measurement but is not is worse than no number.
What you keep
Three documents, yours regardless of what happens next. The inspection is a complete piece of work on its own, and plenty of engagements have stopped there.
A Multipoint Inspection
Every fault named, rated blocking, degrading or monitor, and paired with a fix. Effort is stated in your units, not billable hours. It says whether a fault is common to the category or particular to you, so you know what was your doing and what was never going to hold.
A Human In The Loop Diagnostic
Where judgment actually sat in your system, where it has to sit, and which of your jobs shrink as evidence accumulates. It counts every decision in the workflow and colours it by who really made it, which is usually where the surprise is.
A Scope of Work
What gets built, what you do, and how we both know it is working. Written after the inspection, so every item names the fault it closes and the number that has to move. Nothing is priced before the work is understood, and you are free to take it elsewhere.
Four worlds, and the one everything arrives in
I work with small organizations—a focused group of people, not a department. These four are worlds I work in for myself, which is what qualifies me to work in them for other people: I run these workflows, so I recognise them fast in somebody else’s business.
Design
Design, software, systems and research. The practice itself lives here. So do studios and product teams running on the same handoffs, release checklists and estimates that are always wrong in the same direction.
Music
Music practice, DJing, and the products around them. Bookings, releases, splits and rights are my own recurring work before they are anyone else's, which is why I recognise them fast in a label, an artist or the business around one.
Sustainability
Durable systems, contribution and regeneration. Programmes that have to report on themselves, and that have to keep working after whoever set them up moves on. That is the same test every engagement here has to pass.
Art
Art practice, ceramics, craft and studio work. Commissions, consignment, editions and inventory — records that have to outlast whatever was to hand when they were made.
World
Life and reality before classification. Everything arrives here first and some of it stays a while—industrial distribution is here now. Being unfiled is a state, not a problem: the world a workflow settles into only decides which questions I ask first.
made with Gideon Jr
Write to me with the workflow, not a solution. A paragraph is plenty—working out what is actually wrong with it is my job, not yours.
g@gideonjr.com