Can your business run
without you for five days?

Record what reaches you during one working week. The list can reveal repeated questions and decisions to examine; it cannot prove the business is ready to run without you.

1. Keep the list for five working days

Write one line for every question, decision or approval request that reaches you: calls, texts, the truck window, the customer who’ll only talk to you. Note:

• What was asked.
• Who asked.
• Roughly how long it took you.

Don’t fix anything or change how you answer yet. The week has to be normal. Use paper or phone notes, whichever you’ll actually use at seven in the morning.

2. Sort it into three piles

At week’s end, sort every line into one of three piles:

1. Only I can decide this. A judgment call that really is yours: a price outside the usual, a difficult customer, a hire.
2. Someone could have answered this if it were written down. The weekend rate. Which supplier to use. What to do when a customer isn’t home.
3. The answer exists, but it did not reach the person who needed it. Maybe they couldn’t find it, or didn’t trust that it was current.

Be strict with pile one. A repeated answer is worth examining. It may be documented, but first check whether the decision still needs your judgment or authority.

3. What each pile is telling you

Pile one contains decisions that currently require you. Keep it, but look for decisions you could turn into a rule and hand over. “Under this amount, you decide” is still your decision, made once.

Pile two is knowledge that only lives in your head. Write the answer down once, where the person asking will look: a price sheet in the truck, a one-page checklist on the job folder. It doesn’t need software. It needs to be where the work happens.

Pile three is the interesting one. The answer exists and still came to you. Maybe it lives where nobody goes mid-job, or people learned asking you is faster. Move it to where the work happens, or make checking it a step in the job. Ask why calling you is easier or more reliable than using the written instruction.

4. Choose up to three, then run the week again

Choose up to three recurring questions whose answers can be safely documented or made easier to find. Work on only those. A month later, keep the list for another five comparable days, and note any changes in staffing or workload.

Compare the lists. You’re not after zero. Did those questions stop, and what replaced them? That’s your own before and after, worth more than any outside estimate.

5. What the list won’t show you

It only catches what people asked, not the times someone guessed. For those, look at redone jobs or customers who called back confused, and ask what the person on the job didn’t know.

It also won’t say whether five days away is wise this month. It shows what would land on someone else’s desk if you went.

6. The checklist

1. How many things reached you in five working days?
2. How many were truly yours to decide?
3. Which three questions came up most?
4. For each of those three: is the answer written down anywhere?
5. If it is: where, and would the person asking look there?
6. Which decisions could become a rule someone else applies?
7. If you were unreachable for a day, who would people ask instead, and would that person know?

A manageable next step

Bring your five-day list to a free First Look: a 15-minute call, one real observation and a straight answer on whether more work is worth it. No obligation. Same details typed into several places? See tools that don’t talk to each other. Mostly calls? See what happens to a missed call.

This exercise measures one week. Busy seasons, new staff and unusual jobs will change what reaches you.