The New Hire Who Asked "Where's This Written Down?"

A new operations hire, three weeks in, sharp and well-meaning, asked a simple question in a team meeting: "Where's this written down?" Not about anything complicated — just the process for handling a rush order, which discount tiers actually apply, who approves what.

The room went quiet in the specific way rooms go quiet when everyone realizes, at the same moment, that the honest answer is "nowhere, really — ask around." Four different people gave her four different partial answers, none of them wrong exactly, none of them complete.

It wasn't a bad meeting. It was actually one of the more useful ones that team had in months, because a fresh set of eyes asked the question everyone inside the business had stopped asking a long time ago. That question — "where's this written down?" — is worth asking about your own business every few months, honestly. It's the fastest way to find all four leaks at once.

If a sharp new hire asked your team "where's this written down?" about your busiest process tomorrow, what answer would they actually get?