How it works
One bounded loop, run on every client request.
Ten steps. Nine of them happen on their own. The tenth — anything that leaves the company — always waits for a person. The example running alongside is invented: an invented agency, an invented client, an invented request. It is what the loop looks like, not a case study.
The example
The agency: a twelve-person digital studio. Slack, GitHub, Linear. The account lead is the one who currently reads every client email and decides what happens next.
The client: a physiotherapy clinic whose marketing site the studio built and maintains.
The request: an accessibility fix on the booking page, with a deadline.
- 01
A client request arrives
Email, Slack, a forwarded message, a note from a call.
Requests land wherever the client happens to be — an email to the account lead, a message in a shared channel, something forwarded from a phone. Morris reads them where they land. Nobody has to re-key anything into a form.
IN THE EXAMPLE
Tuesday, 9:12am. The practice manager at the clinic emails the account lead: “Our booking page failed the accessibility audit. The ‘Book now’ button contrast is too low and the form labels aren't read out by a screen reader. Can you sort this before our funding review on the 14th?”
- 02
Understand the concrete asks
One message, several asks, one clear definition of done.
A single message usually holds more than one thing. Morris separates the asks, works out what is actually being requested, and states what would count as done — in plain terms a person can disagree with.
IN THE EXAMPLE
Three things, not one: fix the button contrast; associate the form labels with their inputs; and a hard date — the 14th. Done means both fixes live on the booking page, the audit re-run and passing, and the client told before the review.
- 03
Check existing project context and work
What's already tracked, in progress, decided, and owned.
Before anything new is created, Morris checks the project: the board, the repo, recent conversations, earlier decisions. Most requests touch something that already exists. Duplicates are how work disappears.
IN THE EXAMPLE
The contrast issue was already logged three weeks ago as a low-priority ticket, unassigned. The label problem is new. The site last deployed on Thursday. The account lead owns the client relationship; a front-end developer owns the site.
- 04APPROVAL-GATED
Respond or acknowledge
The client hears that the request landed and was understood.
Morris drafts a short acknowledgement: what was understood, what happens next, when they'll hear more. It goes out only when a person approves it — an acknowledgement is still an external send.
IN THE EXAMPLE
A two-line draft in the account lead's outbox: received, understood as two fixes to the booking page, timing confirmed by end of day. The account lead reads it and sends it as written.
- 05
Create, update or route work
New ticket, updated ticket, or the right person's queue.
If the work is new, a ticket is created in your tracker with the ask stated plainly. If it already exists, that ticket is updated rather than duplicated. Either way it goes to the right owner — or, for bounded engineering work, Morris takes it himself.
IN THE EXAMPLE
The old contrast ticket gets the audit detail, the deadline, and a raised priority. A new ticket is created for the labels and linked to it. Both are small, bounded front-end changes, so Morris picks them up and says so in the project channel.
- 06
Follow execution
Watch the ticket and the PR. Chase what stalls.
Work stalls for boring reasons — a reviewer on leave, a question nobody answered, a branch nobody merged. Morris watches the ticket and the pull request, works out what is blocking, and follows up with the right person.
IN THE EXAMPLE
Morris makes the changes and opens a pull request with before-and-after contrast ratios and the label markup. The usual reviewer is on leave, so the PR sits. Morris asks in the channel for a second reviewer and gets one by lunchtime.
- 07
Verify the result
Done means checked, not claimed.
Morris looks at the actual outcome — the deployed page, the passing check, the merged change — before calling anything finished. If he can't verify it, he says he can't verify it.
IN THE EXAMPLE
After merge and deploy, Morris loads the live booking page. The button contrast is now 7.1:1. Every form field announces its label. He re-runs the audit: it passes.
- 08
Update systems of record
Ticket state, links, a short note — in your tools.
The tracker gets the state change and the links. The project notes get a line about what changed and why. There is no parallel Morris dashboard to keep in sync; the record lives where your team already looks.
IN THE EXAMPLE
Both tickets are closed with links to the PR and the audit result. The project note gains one line: booking page accessibility fixes shipped ahead of the client's review.
- 09
Draft client-visible status
What was asked, what was done, where to see it.
A plain-language update for the client, drafted in your company's voice: what they asked for, what was done, where to see it, anything they should know. It waits in the outbox.
IN THE EXAMPLE
A draft reply: both issues fixed and live, a link to the booking page, a note on how to re-run the audit themselves, and a line confirming this is ahead of the 14th.
- 10APPROVAL-GATED
Human-approved external send
Nothing leaves the company without a person saying so.
A person reads the draft, edits if they want to, and sends. Morris records that the client was told and closes the loop. Every step above happens on its own; this one never does.
IN THE EXAMPLE
The account lead reads the draft, softens one sentence, and sends it. Morris logs that the client was updated. The request that arrived at 9:12 is closed — with a receipt at every step.
What the account lead did in that example
Read two drafts. Sent two emails. That's the whole involvement — not the triage, not the ticket, not the chasing, not the check. The loop ran on its own and stopped at the two points where a person should be the one to act.
Where the line sits between “does it” and “asks you” — and why it sits there — is on the trust page.