Why this piece
Roles first. Then the people in them.
Where your time goes, Who you are, Your ideal customer, Your offer and Your market wrote down your week, your business, your customer, your price and your market. All of it came out of one head: yours.
This one is about roles. Someone quotes, someone schedules, someone does the work, someone sends the invoice. Good businesses are built on a handful of roles like that. You can have great people and still be stuck: when a role is built around one person, the day they leave it can't be filled.
The roles, written down
Every role, what it does in a typical week, who fills it today, and which ones only exist because of the person in them.
The count
How many of the roles that talk to your customers have no say in any decision. Off your own table, in one sitting.
The week someone's away
The roles only one person can fill, and what stops, waits or goes wrong the week they're not there. Before it happens.
The rule of this piece
You don't build a role around a person. You define the role, then put the right person in it.
It's what lets you hire for a role that's written down, instead of trying to replace someone, the day that comes.
Piece 6
Not an org chart. A table of decisions.
Ask AI to map your team and you'll get boxes, names and lines: who reports to whom. It describes the people you have. It doesn't say which roles the business needs, or who decided what went in the last quote.
Here you start from the roles, whoever fills them, and check each one against a typical week. Then eleven everyday decisions: whether you take a job, what goes in the quote, what you tell a customer when a job slips. For each one, the last time it happened: which role decided, which was consulted, which passed it on, which did the work.
Then, separately, which roles talk to your customers. The two answers never get mixed. Side by side, they give you the count.
The two documents you leave with
Who does what
The roles, what each one does in a typical week, who fills it, what it's responsible for, whether it talks to customers and which decisions it has a say in. The decisions table under it. The count on the first line.
Single points
The roles only one person can fill, and what happens the week they're away. Including yours. And whether it's ever actually been tested.
For every decision
Decides: makes the call. Is consulted: gets asked before, and the answer can change it. Coordinates: moves it through the shop. Executes: does the work.
The four prompts
The roles
Every role, checked against a typical week. Who fills it. A role, or built around a person?
Who decides what
Eleven everyday decisions, and where each role sat the last time.
The count
The two columns side by side. Who hears your customers and never gets asked.
The week someone's away
The roles only one person can fill, and what stops without them.
Prompt 3
Then it counts.
Someone answers the phone when you're on a roof. Someone's in the customer's kitchen while you're quoting the next job. Someone takes the call about the invoice. Those roles hear things you don't.
Prompt 3 counts the roles that talk to your customers, then how many of them have no say in any of the decisions you listed. For each one, what customers told them last month, or an "UNKNOWN: ask…" line with a name on it. A question you can ask Monday morning.
The point isn't that everyone should decide everything. A shop where the owner decides is a normal shop. The point is knowing who hears your customers and never gets asked.
Three things the assistant won't do.
It can't tell you whether the right role decides
The table shows which role made the last call. Whether it's the right one depends on who carries it when it goes wrong, who's ready, and who you trust.
It doesn't know what your customers say to your people
It only knows what you tell it. The UNKNOWN lines are the questions only they can answer.
It can't tell you whether a single point is a risk
At three people, some roles will always have one person in them. Covering one is a call about money and time.
Those three were never its job.
Before you name anyone
Roles, not personnel files.
Use a business account where your conversations aren't used to train the model: a business plan, or training switched off in the settings, checked before you start.
- A role, and who fills it by first name, is fine. Wherever it doesn't matter who, use the role alone.
- Pay, hours, reviews, health, family, why someone is off: all of it stays out. That's HR, and it isn't in this piece.
- That only one person has a login is fine. The login itself, a password or a code, never.
- The one test: write every line as if the person it's about will read it. In a shop this size, they will.
Where should we send it?
All four prompts and the two document outlines, in one PDF, in the language you choose. Nothing to pay, nothing to install.
- The link lands in your inbox right away, and the download button appears here too.
- No sales call because of this. If you want to talk to us, you'll write to us.
- We don't sell, rent or trade your address. Ever.
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