Map the manual process before you automate it

Before building a workflow, walk through how the task gets done today, by hand, start to finish. Write down every click, every message, every handoff, in the order it actually happens — not the order you wish it happened in.

Skipping this step is the most common reason automations fail. I've seen people jump straight to building and discover halfway through that they missed a step someone does from memory, like checking a name against an old list. Mapping the process first surfaces those hidden steps while they're still cheap to fix, instead of after the workflow is live and quietly dropping cases.

This map also becomes your test plan. Once the workflow is built, you can run it against the same map and confirm nothing was left out.

Try this today: pick one process and write down, in order, every single action it takes to complete it by hand, including the ones that feel obvious.