Article
You ask someone, "How does onboarding work?" They give you a clean story. It sounds sensible. It sounds organized. It might even sound impressive.
Then you watch the work for ten minutes. Now a form is missing. Someone is digging through email. A spreadsheet has the real status. A Slack message somehow became the handoff system.
That gap is why so many automation projects feel cursed. Not because the team is dishonest. Because the interview gives you the tidy version. The work gives you the truth.
Why interviews mislead
Most people are not lying when they describe a workflow. They are telling you what they believe happens, or what should happen on a decent day.
They skip the annoying bits because those parts have faded into the wallpaper. They forget the detours because they do them on autopilot. So the process doc comes out looking clean, while the actual workflow is held together with memory, side messages, and one reliable person who is quietly doing too much.
A real example
A team says, "When a client pays, we onboard them." Sounds simple enough.
Then you watch one real run. Payment lands. Someone checks the bank. Someone copies the address from an email. Someone creates the folder. Someone asks in Slack, "Did we get the intake form?" Then the kickoff call gets booked.
That is a very different workflow than the one from the interview. If you automate the story instead of the work, you miss the real inputs, the real handoffs, and the real pinch points.
What to watch instead
You do not need to shadow people for a week. You just need one honest run.
Pick one workflow and watch it happen once. While you watch, capture three things.
1. Trigger
What actually starts the work in real life? A form, an email, a payment, a call, a Slack message?
2. Artifacts
What do people touch to get it done? Save the real pieces: the email, the form, the spreadsheet, the template. That is the system, whether anyone meant it to be or not.
3. Breaks
Where does it slow down, get weird, or need a side conversation? Where does someone ask a question? Where does it get handed off and go a little foggy?
The simple fix
When you document a workflow, use two columns:
- what people say happens
- what actually happens
Then fix the biggest mismatch first. Usually it is one of three things: a missing input, a handoff with no owner, or an exception that shows up often enough to stop pretending it is rare.
Why this matters
If you build on the fantasy version of a workflow, you get fragile automation and steady rework. If you build on the real version, even simple automation has a much better shot at working the first week.
If you want help with this, book a discovery call.
If I watched one workflow in your business for 15 minutes, which one would you pick?