Small Team, Clear Roles

Opening excerpt

Who owns Friday's delivery?

At eleven on Thursday, three people at the studio can explain why Friday's order is on track. They are describing three different orders.

Imani has a message requesting six hundred leaflets instead of five hundred. Rowan has a revised proof with a different meeting point. Sam has a production ticket for five hundred copies using the earlier file. Nila, who runs the studio, has a calendar entry saying that the customer will collect at four on Friday. Nobody is hiding anything. Each person has completed the step they thought belonged to them.

The mismatch appears when Sam asks which file to load. Rowan points to the new proof. Imani says the customer is still checking the meeting point. Sam puts the job on hold. For a moment, the hold looks like the problem. In fact, it is the first clear observation of a problem that already exists.

This studio and all its people, orders and conversations are fictional. The case does not report a study or a proven management intervention. We will use it to construct and test practical agreements. Later chapters revisit the studio through related orders and varied scenarios, rather than recording one continuous working week. The question for this opening chapter is small: who owns the decisions needed to keep one customer promise, and what does that ownership require?

Nila's first impulse is to remind everyone of their job titles. Imani handles customers. Rowan handles design. Sam handles production. Nila handles the business. The titles are familiar and still fail to answer the immediate questions. Who may accept a quantity change? Who checks whether that change fits the available production window? Who knows that the customer approved the exact file about to be printed?

A job title groups responsibilities. A particular outcome crosses those groups. The customer's expectation is not four competent departments; it is the correct order at an agreed time and price. To coordinate that outcome, the team needs to know where decisions change hands and which facts travel with them.

Write the promise in ordinary language before drawing boxes around people. For this exercise, it is: supply the agreed quantity from the approved proof, at the agreed price, for collection at the confirmed time. Each use of “agreed” now needs an identifiable record. Which quantity? Which proof? Which price? Which time? The language exposes work that the original calendar entry concealed.