Situation: Where Are You Now?
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Situation: Where Are You Now?
Before you change anything, get honest about where you are right now.
This is simpler than it sounds. What tools are you actually using? What’s working? What’s wasting your time?
The Reality Gap:
There’s almost always a gap between how you think you work and how you actually work. For a solopreneur or small team, that gap usually shows up between what you’re paying for and what you actually use — and between your intended workflow and the shortcuts you’ve quietly adopted.
Reality Gap Questions:
- What tools do you use daily vs. what you’re subscribed to and ignoring?
- Where have you built workarounds because the “proper” tool was too clunky?
- Which parts of your workflow do you dread — and why?
- What are you doing manually that feels like it should be faster?
Workflow Questions:
- What’s my current process for this task, honestly?
- What’s working and what’s frustrating?
- Which repetitive tasks eat the most time each week?
- What quality standard do I need to keep?
- How much setup hassle am I willing to deal with?
Quick Readiness Check:
Rate yourself 1-10 on each:
- Comfort with AI tools (have you used ChatGPT, Claude, or similar?)
- Clarity on what you’d automate first
- Willingness to spend a week testing before expecting results
- Tolerance for imperfect first drafts that need editing
If you scored below 5 on most of these, start with the Takers approach in the Action phase — use the tools as they come, no tweaking. If you scored above 7, you might be ready to shape your own workflows.
For teams: If you’re running this at a team level, expand the Situation assessment to include your current tools, data availability, team skill gaps, change readiness across departments, and leadership support. Map workflows across functions, not just your own.
Without an honest Situation assessment, your Hypothesis will be based on guesswork — and you’ll fix the wrong thing.
Pause and apply: Answer the four Reality Gap questions for your main workflow — honestly, not aspirationally. Write down the gap between what you’re paying for and what you actually use.