Before you can hand a role over, it needs two things: a product, meaning what comes out of it at the end, and a number showing how much of that product actually came out. Without both, you have a document that looks good and no hat.
A product is what comes out
A hat is everything someone else needs to hold a role without you. The line between a product and an activity is what separates a real hat from a nice-looking document.
A product is what is left standing when the role has done its work, ready to be passed on. The test is quick. If your sentence describes doing something, you have no product yet. If it describes something that is there at the finish and was missing at the start, you have one.
Take a front desk. Answering the phones is an activity, and an appointment the client has confirmed is a product. For a designer, working on the design is an activity, and an approved file delivered to the client is the product. For whoever deals with suppliers, talking to them is an activity, and a confirmed order with a delivery date is the product.
Suppose the owner of an online camping shop writes a document for a customer service role, with a heading and a list of tasks. The new hire knows what to do but has no idea what good looks like, and two months later the owner is still answering every complaint himself. Written as a product, the same role reads: a complaint resolved, with a reply the customer confirms they received. She now has a finish line, and she can tell when she is done.
The number that shows the product happened
With a product in place, you can check whether it is really happening. The booklet calls this a statistic: a single number that you count each week to see how much of the product came out.
A feeling about how the month went is not a number, and neither is a sense that things are busier. A real number is counted in the same way each week, and set beside last week's.
Suppose a café where the product of the bar position is a correct drink within three minutes. The number is drinks per hour, and how many get remade. A new weekend hire knows on the first shift what success looks like.
Or a design studio where the product of handling enquiries is a quote sent within the hour. The number is the share of incoming enquiries that got an answer inside the hour.
Or a salon where the product of the front desk is a confirmed appointment. The owner counts the bookings made this week and the no-shows. The second number showed her a problem with her reminders that she had never known about.
When there is nothing to count, the product needs work
The number has a second use that surprises many owners. It tests the product itself, and tells you something about the role beyond how well one person performs it. If you cannot think of anything to count, the product is probably still worded too loosely.
Giving good service cannot be counted, and so it cannot be handed over either. Compare an enquiry answered within one working day, which you can count and also hand over.
Suppose a freelance bookkeeper who first wrote her product as happy clients. There was nothing to count. Rewritten as a VAT return filed by the 15th, it came with a number and a finish line. Or a physiotherapy clinic where the receptionist was told to manage the diary. Rewritten as a full working day with no empty slots, it gained a number too: the hours left unused in the diary.
The booklet sums it up in one sentence: "If you cannot count it, you will not be able to hand it over." The same failure shows up in two places.
Which roles you need at all
Most owners build a team by asking which roles they need. According to the booklet, that question produces roles that sound important and produce nothing. The better question starts at the end: what is the final product the business delivers to the customer, and which products must exist before that one can go out? Each of those products is a hat.
This is how you find roles that exist in practice and that nobody holds. The owner carries them as an undefined fog, which explains the feeling of doing a million things without being able to say what they are.
Suppose a bakery owner who counts backwards from fresh bread on the shelf at seven. Before it comes dough that rose on time, and before that an ingredients order that arrived. He found that nobody owned the ingredients order, so it slipped through about once a month.
Or a pilates studio owner who was sure she needed a marketing manager. Counting backwards showed that what she lacked was a member returning for a second class. The role she needed was follow-up with people who had just joined.
The same logic settles who is senior. What makes a role senior is how complete and large its product is, however many hours it takes or however tiring it is. A role that delivers a whole product ranks above one that delivers only part of it, no matter how busy the second one looks. Picture an employee who is always in motion, replies to everyone and seems the busiest person in the building, yet you cannot name one product that came out of their hands. Being busy proves nothing about output, and one question settles it: what came out?
The booklet gives this chapter two short exercises, called analyse and do it. In the practice section at the end there is also one called spot it.
A role you can hand over starts with a product you can see at the end, and a number that shows it came out.