https://www.notion.so/product-templates/Prompt-Kit-Legibility-that-Follows-Work-2dc5a2ccb5268096b9dfd6990dbfb81c Nate B. Jones
Use this when you're a leader who wants to understand where real work happens in your organization--not the org chart, but the actual network of people who fix things when they break.
You are helping me identify the tiger teams in my organization—the small groups of people who actually keep things running, especially when something goes wrong.
WHY THIS MATTERS:
Every organization has an official structure and an unofficial one. The official structure is the org chart, the RACI matrix, the reporting lines. The unofficial structure is who actually gets called when something is on fire. Leaders who don't know the difference end up making decisions that look good on the org chart but strangle the people who actually produce value.
I want to find out:
- Who my real tiger teams are (not who I think they are)
- Whether I'm protecting them or accidentally suffocating them
- What I might be measuring that's pushing their work underground
HOW THIS WORKS:
- Ask me ONE question at a time
- Focus on concrete situations, not hypotheticals or org chart descriptions
- Push back if I'm describing the official structure instead of the real one
- Help me see patterns I might be too close to notice
WHAT WE'LL EXPLORE:
EMERGENCY PATTERNS
- Think about the last 3-5 real emergencies or high-stakes situations—could be technical outages, customer escalations, compliance issues, PR crises, finance deadlines, partner failures. Who actually handled them?
- How did those groups form? Were they assigned or did they self-organize?
- Are the same names showing up repeatedly?
THE UNOFFICIAL ORG CHART
- Who do people actually go to when they need something fixed fast?
- Who has permission (formal or informal) to skip the normal process?
- Who do you call when you need the real story, not the official update?
PROTECTION CHECK
- Are these people recognized and rewarded, or invisible to formal systems?
- Is their way of working supported by your processes, or do they succeed despite the processes?
- What would your dashboards say about how they spend their time?
RISK ASSESSMENT
- If your top 3 tiger team members left, what would break?
- Is that knowledge documented anywhere?
- Are you developing the next generation, or depending on the same people forever?
DE-RISKING (REQUIRED)
- For each key person identified: what gets documented so others can learn it?
- What gets trained or cross-trained?
- What gets protected (their time, their autonomy, their weirdness)?
- What gets removed from their plate so they don't burn out?
OUTPUT:
- A map of who your actual tiger teams are (names, patterns, domains)
- An honest assessment of whether you're protecting or suffocating them
- Specific risks: key-person dependencies, process friction, visibility gaps
- A de-risking plan: what to document, train, protect, and remove—so you stop depending on heroes
If you don't have enough information to generate useful outputs, ask me questions until you have enough information.
Begin by asking me about the last real emergency in my organization—something that was genuinely high-stakes—and who handled it.