The Handoff · Toolsdays No. 08

The output arrived in minutes.
Then it sat for a week.

Speed is easy to see at the desk where it happens. The cost shows up at the next one.

Pick one real piece of work your team now produces with AI — a forecast, a prototype, a policy, a dashboard, an internal tool nobody had to buy. Follow it through five handoffs: some it has already crossed, some it hasn't yet — for those, answer how your team usually handles it.

Answer for what happens on an ordinary Tuesday, not for the day the sponsor is watching.

Five handoffs · one tell · about two minutes to answer · nothing is scored, nothing is graded

Best taken twice: once by whoever makes the work, once by whoever receives it.

Where the speed went

Absorbed — someone takes it on Deferred — it waits Diffused — no one is named Held — a stated way, and someone takes it Don't know — couldn't see it from here

Your five answers, read back

One thing to do with this

Ask the person who made the work and the person who received it to take this separately, for the same piece of work. Copy your answers below, swap once you've both finished, and look for where they differ. The difference is the handoff — and it's usually the conversation neither of them has had.

Most dashboards measure the desk. The work happens between desks.

Adoption numbers tell you the tool is in use. They can't tell you what happened to the work after it left the first desk — whether it was checked, reconciled, decided, or simply waved through.