What's one process in your business that still runs on "I'll remember to check that" instead of an actual system?
Every business has at least one of these. Not a broken process, just a nonexistent one that got replaced by a personal habit.
Mine was checking a specific partner's Slack channel. There was no reminder, no calendar block, nothing. I just told myself I'd remember to look, and for months I mostly did, until the one week I didn't and missed something that mattered.
The uncomfortable part isn't the miss itself. It's realizing how much of the business was quietly depending on my memory instead of an actual system, and I never noticed until it failed.
Curious what everyone else's version of this is. Doesn't have to be dramatic, just the thing you know, if you're honest, isn't really a process yet.
For us it was renewal dates and vendor contract terms — lived in one person's head until they were out sick for two weeks and everyone realized nobody else knew when three different subscriptions auto-renewed. The fix wasn't a fancy system, just forcing every "I'll remember" into a shared doc with a date and an owner.
Full disclosure, the broader version of this problem (context that only lives in someone's head) is what I'm building Rootr around — but honestly a spreadsheet with owners and dates solves 80% of this specific case.
"A spreadsheet with owners and dates solves 80% of this specific case" is a really honest way to frame it. That's the split I keep coming back to as well, most single-instance versions of this problem really are a shared doc away from fixed, it's only once the same pattern repeats across a bunch of different threads/people/businesses at once that a dedicated system earns its keep over a spreadsheet.
Mine used to be checking a site's health after plugin or WordPress updates. I'd tell myself, "I'll just remember to take a quick look," and most of the time I did.
What stood out to me is how easy it is to mistake consistency for a process. A long streak of remembering creates the illusion that the process is reliable, when in reality it hasn't been tested by a missed day yet.
The first failure doesn't always break the process. Sometimes it simply reveals there never was one.
That last line is the whole post honestly, might steal it. The WordPress example is such a good one because it looks fine for months, that's what makes it dangerous. Thanks for adding this.