JULY 29, 2025

The AI Consultant Briefing

Essential Insights for Executive Teams, Chief of Staff, and EAs

Don’t Improvise, Institutionalize:

Build Your Playbook Before You Scale

By: Janet Nash

Narrative: Why Heroes Can’t Save Broken Systems

In every organization, there’s always that one person—the fixer, the hero—who swoops in and patches up problems, answers every question, and remembers how things “really” work. But what happens when your hero is out sick, takes a new job, or simply burns out? If your success depends on improvisation, you’re not running a business—you’re running a rescue operation.

The Problem: No Playbook Means No Progress

Without a clear, shared playbook, processes break down as soon as something changes. Knowledge stays locked in individual heads. Teams waste time reinventing the wheel, and every new hire struggles to catch up. A 2022 study by PwC found that companies with formal, documented workflows outperform their peers on quality, speed, and staff retention. If you can’t teach your process, you can’t scale it.

The Lesson: Temporary Fixes Become Permanent Problems

Your playbook isn’t a binder gathering dust. It’s a living, breathing guide that captures what works—and why. The best organizations document not just steps, but intent: what’s the goal, who’s accountable, what does “good” look like, and what should be avoided at all costs. This is how excellence becomes the norm, not the exception.

The Case Build: The Cost of Not Institutionalizing

A national retail chain spent millions on automation, but neglected to codify their “unwritten rules.” As key staff rotated out, service slipped, customer complaints soared, and efficiency plummeted. Once leadership built a true process playbook—complete with roles, handoffs, and exception handling—customer satisfaction rebounded and errors dropped by 40%.

Steal This Process

(Step 5): Build Your Playbook

Before you automate, capture your best thinking in one place:

1. Document the Essentials: Write down every step, decision point, and handoff. Don’t leave anything to chance.

2. Assign Ownership: For each step, name the accountable person or role. Shared responsibility is the same as no responsibility.

3. Add Context and Examples: Show not just how, but why—include real examples of what works (and what doesn’t).

4. Review and Refresh: Set a schedule to update the playbook as things change. Processes evolve; your documentation should too.

5. Train and Test: Walk new team members through the playbook and have them test it in real scenarios. If it breaks, improve it.

Bring your draft playbook to your next leadership meeting. The goal isn’t to make it perfect on day one—it’s to make it visible and usable.

Real Story: When Building the Playbook Unlocked Growth

A professional services firm saw their onboarding times cut in half after they turned their “tribal knowledge” into a living playbook. Errors dropped, staff ramped up faster, and the firm scaled to twice its size in under two years—all without losing their unique culture.

Context and Tension: What Happens If You Skip the Playbook

Skip the playbook and you’re stuck relying on luck and memory. Growth becomes risky, quality is unpredictable, and every change becomes a crisis. Document your best moves so the whole team can win—again and again.

Your Challenge for This Week

Start your playbook. Gather your team, map the process, and capture the details that make things work. Need a template to get started? Reply and I’ll send one over.

The Bottom Line

If you want repeatable success, don’t improvise—document. Build your playbook before you automate, and you’ll be ready for whatever comes next.

Special Resource:

Your July “Steal This Process” Playbook

For everyone following along this month, I’m sending you a single, combined template that brings together every step from the “Steal This Process” series. This resource puts all five tools in one place—ready for you to use, share with your team, or adapt for your own workflows. Check your inbox for the download.

Curious how this plays out in companies like yours?

If you’d like a confidential sounding board—or want to see how other executives are tackling these exact challenges—let’s have a focused executive briefing. No pressure, just real-world perspective tailored to your priorities.

To request your private briefing, email [email protected]. I review every message personally and reply within one business day.

Sources & Further Reading:

PricewaterhouseCoopers. (2022). How process documentation drives performance. PwC Insights. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/upskilling/process-documentation-performance.html

Davenport, T. H., & Short, J. E. (1990). The new industrial engineering: Information technology and business process redesign. Sloan Management Review, 31(4), 11-27. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-new-industrial-engineering-information-technology-and-business-process-redesign/

Harvard Business Review. (2021). Why every company needs a process playbook. https://hbr.org/2021/10/why-every-company-needs-a-process-playbook

McKinsey & Company. (2020). From tribal knowledge to scalable processes: Institutionalizing best practices. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insights/from-tribal-knowledge-to-scalable-processes

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