In The Cut
Useful before impressive.
Getting our hands dirty inside real businesses, finding the bottlenecks, and getting people home to their families sooner. A little bit of everything.
What this is
In The Cut is where we write down what we find. We get our hands dirty inside real businesses, look for the bottlenecks, and work out what would get people home to their families sooner.
Some of it is a tool, some is a checklist, some is just a better question to ask. It is a little bit of everything, and always useful before it is impressive. Sign up, copy a prompt, play today’s song, and see what you think.
Set up In The Cut
Step 1 of 3
This takes about ten seconds and costs nothing. Here is what you get.
- New letters from In The Cut, when we publish them.
- A song and a quote of the day, right on this page.
- Prompts you can copy to find the bottlenecks in your own business.
Song of the Day
God's Plan
Drake
Quote of the Day
“If the price was a lot of work and a few missed shots, I was OK with that.”
Prompts for finding bottlenecks
Paste any of these into the AI chat you already use. Replace the [brackets] with your own details.
Map a normal day
Start here. Find where the hours actually go.
I run [type of business] with [number] people. Interview me, one question at a time, to map a normal working day from first task to last. Ask what happens, who does it, what tool or paper is involved, and how long it takes. After about 12 questions, list every step in order and flag the three that look slowest, most repeated, or most dependent on one person. Do not suggest fixes yet.
Find where work waits
Jobs stall between hands, not inside them.
Here is how a job moves through my business, from first call to final payment: [describe the steps and who touches each]. For each handoff, tell me where the work is most likely to sit waiting, what it is probably waiting on, and one question I should ask my team to confirm it. Rank the handoffs by how much delay they probably add. Say plainly when you are guessing.
List the repeat work
Anything done the same way every week is a candidate.
These are tasks my team does over and over: [list them]. For each one, tell me what information goes in, what comes out, and whether the steps are the same every time. Sort them into three groups: a person should keep doing it, a simple template or checklist would help, and software could do most of it. Explain each placement in one sentence and name what you would need to know to be sure.
Get everyone home sooner
Work backwards from the late evenings.
On most days my team stays late because of [describe what usually runs over]. Ask me up to ten questions about what causes it. Then give me a short list of causes you can see, sorted by how much of the delay each one probably explains, and for each one suggest the smallest change I could try for one week. I will tell you what happened afterward.
Design a one-week test
Try one change small before you commit to it.
I want to fix this bottleneck: [describe it]. Design a one-week test I can run without buying anything or changing my whole process. Tell me what to change, who does what, what to measure at the start and the end, and what result would mean the change is not worth keeping. Keep it to one page.
