The Stack You Hand Over

Part 1, The Job Nobody Wrote Down, wrote the job down; part 2, The Work You Stop Doing, decided what to stop; part 3, The Work That Runs Without You, handed the small customer lines to rules; this part hands over the rest.

The second name goes on the chart on a Monday. Sometimes it's hire number two. Sometimes it's your successor, and you're the one moving on. Either way, someone has to learn the job by Friday, and until now the job has lived in exactly one place.

The instinct is a handover doc. You open a blank page the week before they start and try to write down everything you do. It's the wrong artifact. It's a snapshot of what you remember, which isn't the same as what you do. And you write it the week you're busiest, because the week before a handover is always the week you're busiest. It's out of date by Friday, and nobody reads it twice.

I know because I wrote one. The last time I handed a job over, I spent the final week on a doc with a table of contents and a section called "Things I'd forget." The person taking over read it once, politely, and then spent two weeks asking me questions it didn't answer. Most of the answers were sitting somewhere I'd never thought to point: the CRM's history, my sent folder, a notes field nobody else opened. I'd handed over a description of the job. The job's own record stayed behind.

This series has been building the other artifact all along. Not a doc about the job. The job, written down as it runs.

What the series already wrote

Put the first three parts side by side and look at what's already on the table.

The inventory. Part 1 wrote the job down by recurrence: what happens every day, every week, and every time something specific occurs. One line per task, with what triggers it and who'd notice if it stopped. That's a job description written while the job was being done, which is the only kind that stays accurate.

The stop list. Part 2 crossed out the lines nobody would miss and circled the ones a customer would notice by lunch. That's the part of a handover nobody writes: what you deliberately don't do, and why.

The rules. Part 3 handed the circled lines to rules. A rule you set once: when this happens, do that. Bryn is the agent we built at Civic to spot buyers on your site and run the follow-up you approved. Bryn calls that kind of rule a Play, and I'll keep the plain word here. The "when" is a signal: something a buyer just did, like coming back to your pricing page. Some rules draft the step and wait for a person to approve it. Each rule sits on a rung, set by what one wrong run would cost: it runs on its own, it runs after my yes, or it stays mine. Bryn calls the middle rung Approve mode.

The runs. Every time a rule fires, it leaves a line: what fired, what it did, from whom, and who said yes. That's the part no handover doc has ever had. It's the job, being done, with a time on every step.

Put together, that's the onboarding doc. Nobody wrote it for the handover, which is the point. It was written by doing the work, so it's still accurate on Friday. I made the same argument about marketing materials on Monday, in Built, Not Generated: the speed comes from the record. A handover is the same job with a person at the end of it.

The handover test

Here's the test. It's one question, asked of every line on the chart: could someone run this from the record alone?

Not "could someone smart work it out." From the record alone, without calling you. If yes, the line is handed over already, whether or not anyone has started. If no, the line lives in your head, and that's what you write down this week, before anyone arrives.

Run it on what survived part 2, plus the judgment calls that were always yours.

The rule lines pass without effort. A rule in four fields is already a description someone else can read: when this happens, do this, from this owner, write it down. The runs beside it show what it did last week. Those lines were written to be read.

The by-hand lines split. The weekly email passes, because the template is the instructions. The CRM cleanup usually doesn't. What counts as a duplicate, which owner wins when two people touched an account, which stage means what: that's a set of habits you've never had to say out loud. Attribution is the same. These are the lines you'd explain over someone's shoulder, and over someone's shoulder isn't a record.

The judgment lines fail, and they should. Quoting a price that isn't on the list can't run from a record, because the record would have to contain you. Leave those as no's. They get handed over differently, and I'll come to that.

Look at where the by-hand no's land: in the boxes you're about to hand to someone else. That's not bad luck. It's why you're hiring. For each by-hand no, write down the calls you make in the middle, the part you'd otherwise say over their shoulder. Not the steps; they'll see the steps. The calls. It's usually half a page, and it's the only writing this handover needs.

Two names on the chart

Now draw the chart again, with two names on it. On the figures the new person is Sam, a placeholder.

Every box that survived part 2 goes one of three ways. It goes to the new person. It stays yours. Or it stays with its rule, right where part 3 put it. Most handover conversations only have the first two options, which is why they turn into a negotiation about who does what. The third option is the one that makes the conversation short, because a box on a rule doesn't need a person to run it. It needs a person to say yes.

That's the part that's easy to miss. A rule on the runs-after-my-yes rung has a yes-sayer, and while there was one name on the chart, that was me. The rule doesn't change when a second name arrives, but who approves it might. Make that decision on purpose: name who approves from the first day, and make the change where the rule lives, so the record shows it with a date. The version to avoid is a rule that keeps drafting for a yes-sayer who's moved on. The draft waits, politely, and the customer it was for hears nothing.

My split, for the chart this series has been drawing: Demand and Ops and data go to the new person, since that's where the work done by hand still lives. Lifecycle and Sales assist stay with their rules, and the new person becomes their yes-sayer. The head box, the judgment, stays mine for now. Move them around. If every box ends up with the new name, you're not hiring a second person. You're drawing your successor's chart, which is a fine thing to do on purpose.

The first week, from the log

Then give the new person a reading order, not a doc.