Guide — filed July 2026
What happens in a workflow teardown: the script, published
Booking a "free call" with a consultancy usually buys you twenty minutes of qualifying questions and a follow-up sequence. The cheapest way to prove this one is different is to publish the entire script. So here it is — every question, in order, plus exactly what you leave with. Bring your ugliest workflow; we'll run the procedure on it.
What is a workflow teardown?
A workflow teardown is a free 30-minute screen-share where one messy workflow gets mapped live: we diagram it as you describe it, mark where time and accuracy leak, and put rough numbers on what the leaks cost per year. You leave with the diagram, a recording, and a written recommendation — whether or not you ever spend a dollar.
The script, minute by minute
FIG. 1 — The whole ceremony. Nothing up the sleeve; the sleeve is published.
Minutes 0–6 — the ugliest process. Ideally you arrive with it already in mind; the booking form asks for exactly this reason. If you don't, we dig: where does work stall, what gets re-typed, which task does everyone dread? One process per teardown. Depth beats coverage.
Minutes 6–10 — the spreadsheet count. "How many spreadsheets are we talking?" is partially a joke, and we ask it every time, because there are always spreadsheets being used where they shouldn't be. The reigning example from our delivery work: a client maintaining five separate manually-updated spreadsheets, each carrying the same quarterly product-promotion data presented differently — one a print schedule, one promotion specifics, and so on. Five copies of one truth, drifting apart on purpose. (We replaced all five with Workfront reports that generate themselves after the data is entered once.)
Minutes 10–18 — the numbers. How many repeatable tasks live inside the process? How many minutes does each take by hand? What percentage of the time does something come out wrong? Roughly what does an hour of the people doing it cost? Four estimates — rough is fine — and the annual price of the process falls out of the arithmetic on screen, while you watch. No proprietary methodology, no black box. It's multiplication.
Minutes 18–24 — the systems, the inputs, the outputs. What tools touch this process, and are they all load-bearing? This question exists because of a pattern we've hit countless times in delivery work: an intake form — Microsoft Forms, typically — collecting requests that a human then re-keys into the real system by hand. Two systems, one of them functioning purely as a waiting room. Then: what actually enters the process, and what's supposed to come out? The diagram gets its arrows here.
Minutes 24–30 — the landscape, and what happens next. Where is your company on AI tooling today — is there a Claude plan (or appetite for one), and what's already allowed? This decides what the future-state sketch can honestly assume. Then the close, which is a description of paperwork, not a pitch — next section.
What you leave with
The follow-up is a packet, not a call campaign:
- The diagram — built live while you talked, polished afterward, yours.
- The recording, with AI-generated notes and action items for both sides.
- The one-sheeter — the time and money the current process burns, the potential future state, and our recommendation.
The recommendation is one written sentence of three possible kinds: this could be a Claude skill — a $850 session builds it live; this is a build — say the word and a proposal deck follows; or don't automate this — fix the process first. It arrives in writing. What happens next is your move.
Who shouldn't book one
Honest disqualifiers, so neither of us spends thirty minutes finding them out live: if there's no workflow you're curious about and no appetite to find one, the call has nothing to chew on. If the person who actually runs the process won't be in the room, the map will be wrong in the ways that matter. And if the goal is a project quote without a conversation, skip the teardown and just say so — proposal decks don't require ceremonies.
Interrogatories
Is a workflow teardown really free?
Yes. Thirty minutes, no invoice, and the packet — diagram, recording, one-sheeter — is yours regardless of what you decide afterward.
Is it a sales call?
It's a working session with a written recommendation at the end. The recommendation can be "book a Skill Session," "request a build proposal," or "don't automate this." You'll notice all three end the call the same way: with paperwork, not pressure.
What should I prepare?
One messy workflow and, ideally, the person who lives inside it. Rough numbers help — how often it runs, how long it takes — but we'll estimate together on the call if you don't have them.
What if the process is too much of a mess to explain?
Mess is the raw material. The diagram exists precisely because describing a tangled process out loud is hard — you talk, it takes shape on screen, and you correct the shape instead of the words.