The How to series · Post 26
What a month of drafting taught us about the loops
For UK small-business owners who followed this month's posts: the loops that kept returning across every trade, and what the same fix looked like each time.
Friday afternoon, going back through a month of drafts: the daily social posts and these blog pieces. The trades scene read like the letting scene, and the accountancy scene read like both. Different paperwork, same shape. By the third reread, we stopped counting trades and started counting loops.
Four loops kept coming back, across every trade we wrote about: documents rebuilt to fit someone else's template, people chased for answers, the same details typed between tools, and the follow-up that never got sent. The trade changed. The loop didn't. That's the tell. The problem was never the industry. It's that the work repeats and nobody owns it.
The fix looked the same every time, in two parts: one machine that drafts and watches, and a person who approves. Nothing sends unchecked. Yesterday's post assembled the month and left a draft for a person to approve. Monday's stopped at the approval step on the rebuilt document, and Tuesday's watched the calendar while the chase stayed a person's decision. Same two parts, different paperwork.
Honest limits, said out loud: this only works where the work repeats and there's a right answer. A negotiation doesn't repeat. A difficult conversation has no right answer. Where the work does repeat, the hours are usually sitting right there, unowned, waiting for someone to put a number on them.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
One number for the month, built on a floor you can edit:
- Four loops, each given a floor of 30 minutes a week per person: reformatting, chasing, retyping, the unsent follow-up
- = 2 hours a week per person
- × £30 an hour × 46 working weeks = £2,760 a year, per person
On a team of five, that's nearly £14,000 before anyone counts a single hour properly. The floor is deliberate: most of the scenes we drafted this month ran individual loops well past 30 minutes a week. Swap in your own minutes. The shape is the finding; the figure is yours to replace.
Score it: the three checks
Score the four loops as a family, on the sketch assumptions:
- Hours. Two hours a week per person at the floor, usually more: 4.
- Repeat. Each of the four can be written on one page. That's why they kept coming back: 4.
- Risk-if-wrong. The loops end in drafts, not decisions. A person approves before anything sends, so a slip is contained: 4.
Verdict: three at 4 or more, hand over. Start with the loop you wrote down first, one step at a time, with a person on the approval.
Try one thing this week (free)
Name your loop. Write down the one piece of work you could recite from memory: the thing that happens every week without anyone scheduling it. Then time it once this week. Judge it by Friday against two conditions: does it repeat, and is there a right answer? If both hold, it's handover-shaped, and it's the first question the £499 diagnostic asks.
Where a person stays
The month's drafts agreed on one design rule, and we hold ourselves to it: software prepares, a person decides. The machine drafts the document and assembles the month-end statement. It watches the calendar while you do something else. The approval and the judgement call stay with a person, and anything touching money, compliance or legal stays approval-only, always. A handover that gives away the deciding along with the typing isn't a fix; it's a leak wearing one.
FAQ
Four kept returning across every trade: documents rebuilt for someone else's template, people chased for answers, the same details typed between tools, and the follow-up that never got sent. Different paperwork, same shape.
Because the loops come from watching how work repeats, not from a client list, and we name our limits in the same breath. It only works where the work repeats and there's a right answer. The drafts are our reasoning in public, checkable line by line.
The fix is the same two parts; the paperwork differs. One machine that drafts and watches, and a person who approves. Nothing sends unchecked. The trade changes. The loop doesn't.
One-off work: the negotiation, or the exception nobody has seen before. Where work doesn't repeat, software is decoration. We'd rather say that than sell a tool that doesn't fit.
Write down the work you could recite from memory. Time it once this week. Then check the two conditions: it repeats, and there's a right answer. If both hold, you've found the loop worth looking at first.