In January 2020 I took my sons along to try inline hockey, at a converted lorry loading bay on an industrial estate in Rushden. I am now the coach. This is a pattern in my life that I have stopped fighting: I turn up to a thing, and shortly afterwards I am responsible for the thing.
It is voluntary, which means the money runs the other way. I pay in.
Each session is an hour, and I plan it the night before. What I want to put in front of you is the bit I noticed only when I tried to explain it to somebody else.
Before every session I am working against a list of constraints. Everyone takes part whatever their level. Nobody stands about waiting a turn. No wild slapshots, because the floor is small enough that they are genuinely dangerous. And whatever we do has to be a skill they will use in a game.
Then there are the three things that tell me it worked.
It was fun.
Something was learned.
It was a good workout.
That is a specification. I have run it for six years and I have never once written it down.
Which is the part worth your attention, because you have one too.
Somewhere in your business is a set of conditions that everything gets checked against before it goes out. You apply it without noticing. It is why you can look at a proposal for ninety seconds and know it isn't right, and why the person who wrote it cannot.
The cost of never writing it down is not that the work is bad. The work is good. That is rather the problem, because it means nothing forces the issue.
The cost is that it only ever gets applied by you, one item at a time, forever.
There is a simple test. Ask somebody on your team what you are checking for when you review their work. If they can tell you, it has travelled. If they describe what you usually change rather than why, it hasn't.
Most owners get the second answer.
PS: If you want to see how much of your business is still only in your head, the diagnostic is free and there is no call attached: https://lifestack.studio/diagnostic