Handoff

A handoff is the moment work passes from one person, tool, or step to another, and it's one of the most fragile points in any process. Each handoff is a chance for the work to wait in a queue, lose context, or be dropped entirely because each side assumed the other had it. Counter-intuitively, the more steps and people involved, the more the handoffs, not the tasks, end up dominating how long and how reliably things get done.

For a lean founder handoffs deserve outsized attention because they're where delay and error quietly accumulate, and they multiply as you start delegating. The instinct when growing is to add people and stages, but every new boundary adds friction. The discipline is to minimise handoffs where you can, keeping related work with one owner, and to make the unavoidable ones clean: a clear trigger, a complete package of context, and an explicit owner on the receiving side. Smooth, well-defined handoffs are what let work move through your operation without you personally shepherding every step.