{ "collection": "Apex Instruments onboarding paths", "version": "1.0", "published": "2026-10-01", "note": "Fictional sample data for a portfolio demonstration. Apex Instruments, Northlight Group, Meridian and Atlas Care do not exist. Nothing here describes a real company, product or service.", "principle": "Adoption is not training. It is making the first real task easy enough to finish.", "paths": [ { "id": "new-teammate", "name": "New teammate", "shortName": "New teammate", "kind": "setup", "who": "Someone who started this week and has never opened the system.", "promise": "Fifteen minutes, ending with one real answer saved where the team can see it.", "totalMinutes": 15, "shape": "About fifteen minutes, done sitting down, once.", "before": [ "A workspace account, created for you before you sit down, not during", "A laptop you are already signed in on", "One real question from your own week, not a test question", "Fifteen minutes with no meeting inside them" ], "done": "One real answer, saved in your own work zone with its source line still attached, and one colleague who knows you have it.", "steps": [ { "id": "nt-1", "title": "Sign in and look before you touch", "minutes": 2, "what": "Open the shared workspace. Do not create anything yet. Find the five shared folders everyone reads and the work zone with your own name on it.", "done": "You can see a folder with your name on it and you know which folders you may write into." }, { "id": "nt-2", "title": "Read the one page on what it may and may not answer", "minutes": 3, "what": "Open facts/what-the-assistant-may-answer. It is one page. Half of it is the list of things it refuses. Read that half twice, because that is the half people forget.", "done": "You can name two questions it will refuse and say who answers them instead." }, { "id": "nt-3", "title": "Ask it something you already know the answer to", "minutes": 2, "what": "Ask a question from your own work where you are certain of the answer. This is not a test of the system. It is how you learn to read its answers.", "done": "The answer matched what you already knew, and you saw the line at the bottom saying where it came from." }, { "id": "nt-4", "title": "Ask it something you do not know", "minutes": 2, "what": "Now ask the real one. Give it the file or the folder, not a description of the file. If it refuses, read the refusal and note who it routed you to.", "done": "You got either an answer with a source or a refusal with a name attached. Both count." }, { "id": "nt-5", "title": "Ask for the source and throw the answer away without one", "minutes": 2, "what": "Reply with: which file did that come from, and when was it last checked. If it cannot say, the answer does not leave this window.", "done": "You have seen it name a file, and you know what to do on the day it cannot." }, { "id": "nt-6", "title": "Save the answer where the next person will find it", "minutes": 2, "what": "Put the answer in your work zone under intake, with the question above it and the source below it. Not in a note on your desktop, and not in the chat window you are about to close.", "done": "The answer exists in a folder somebody else can open." }, { "id": "nt-7", "title": "Tell one person what you asked", "minutes": 2, "what": "Post the question and the answer in the team channel. Two lines. This is the step people skip, and it is the one that makes the second person try it.", "done": "One colleague has read what you asked and what came back." } ] }, { "id": "adopting", "name": "Already here, adopting it", "shortName": "Adopting it", "kind": "reading", "who": "Someone who has been on the team for a year and has been politely ignoring this.", "promise": "Ten minutes of reading, ending with one task from your own week written down.", "totalMinutes": 10, "shape": "About ten minutes of reading, done once, at your desk.", "before": [ "Ten quiet minutes", "The list of what you actually did last week, not what you meant to do", "Your team's approval route, or the name of the person who knows it" ], "done": "You can say the three ways in without looking them up, you know which model you will reach for by default, and one task from your own week is written down for tomorrow morning.", "steps": [ { "id": "ad-1", "title": "Read what changed and what did not", "minutes": 2, "what": "The approval route did not change. The templates did not change. What changed is where the first draft comes from and how long the finding step takes.", "done": "You can say in one sentence what is different about your Monday." }, { "id": "ad-2", "title": "Read the three ways in", "minutes": 3, "what": "The chat window, the working session, and the code path. They are not three products. They are three amounts of your attention, and picking the wrong one is the most common way this goes badly.", "done": "You can say which of the three a five minute question belongs in and which one a monthly report belongs in." }, { "id": "ad-3", "title": "Read the model table and pick your default", "minutes": 2, "what": "Five tiers, one column saying what each suits and one saying why. Pick the one you will reach for without thinking, and note the one job you will step up to the deep tier for.", "done": "You have a default and one named exception." }, { "id": "ad-4", "title": "Read the daily four", "minutes": 2, "what": "Four things to do every day. None of them takes more than a minute. Together they are the difference between a team that uses this in March and a team that stopped in October.", "done": "You can list all four from memory." }, { "id": "ad-5", "title": "Write down the first task you will hand over", "minutes": 1, "what": "From last week's list, pick the task you disliked most that nobody would notice you had help with. Write it on tomorrow's list. Do not start it now.", "done": "One task, named, on tomorrow's list." } ] }, { "id": "operator", "name": "Operator standing it up", "shortName": "Operator", "kind": "setup", "who": "The one person who will own this for the team and answer for it when it gets something wrong.", "promise": "Forty five minutes, ending with a system a new teammate can finish the fifteen minute path on without asking you anything.", "totalMinutes": 45, "shape": "About forty five minutes, done in one sitting, before anyone else is invited in.", "before": [ "Write access to the shared workspace", "An agreed approval route, even a rough one", "A named owner for every area of fact, a person rather than a team", "One real piece of work you can push through end to end today" ], "done": "A new teammate can finish the fifteen minute path without asking you a single question, and one real piece has gone the whole route with an approval record behind it.", "steps": [ { "id": "op-1", "title": "Name the owner of every area of fact", "minutes": 3, "what": "Products, plans, service, ordering, training. One person against each, by name. If two names go against one area, the system has no owner for it.", "done": "Five areas, five names, written down where the team can see them." }, { "id": "op-2", "title": "Load the approved facts and sign each one", "minutes": 6, "what": "Twenty facts is enough to start. Each one carries the answer, the file it came from, the owner, and the date they approved it. An unsigned fact is a rumour with better formatting.", "done": "Every fact in the file has a source line, an owner, and a date." }, { "id": "op-3", "title": "Write the refusal rules and read them out loud", "minutes": 5, "what": "Prices, turnaround, delivery dates, discounts, unreleased products, anything spoken on a partner's behalf. Write the exact wording it will use and the person it routes to. Read them out loud, because wording that sounds fine on screen often sounds rude in a room.", "done": "Six or more rules, each with wording you would be happy for a partner to read." }, { "id": "op-4", "title": "Decide who may write into approved", "minutes": 4, "what": "The approved folder should have one writer: the approval route itself. Everybody else proposes. This is the decision people argue with and the one that keeps the facts trustworthy.", "done": "The approved folder lists exactly one writer and everyone knows the route in." }, { "id": "op-5", "title": "Put the four templates in place", "minutes": 6, "what": "The partner letter, the internal decision note, the one page brief, and the weekly update. Four is enough. A template nobody uses is a maintenance cost with no return.", "done": "Four templates in the templates folder, each with a worked example beside it." }, { "id": "op-6", "title": "Run one real piece all the way through", "minutes": 6, "what": "Not a sample. A real piece with a real deadline. Draft, check, review, approve, file. Time each stage and write the times down. You are looking for the stage that takes four times longer than you expected.", "done": "One approved piece with a record behind it, and a note of where the time actually went." }, { "id": "op-7", "title": "Turn on the weekly freshness sweep", "minutes": 4, "what": "Once a week, list every fact older than its review period and send that list to its owner. Nothing clever. A list, to a person, on a day.", "done": "The sweep is scheduled and the first list has already gone out." }, { "id": "op-8", "title": "Book the fifteen minute setup for the first three people", "minutes": 5, "what": "Three people, three separate fifteen minute slots in the diary this week. Choose the three who will tell other people afterwards, not the three who are keenest.", "done": "Three slots booked, with names in them." }, { "id": "op-9", "title": "Write the one page for when it refuses", "minutes": 6, "what": "People abandon a system the first time it says no and they do not know what to do next. One page: here is why it refused, here is who answers instead, here is how to get the fact approved so it stops refusing.", "done": "One page in the shared folder, linked from the refusal wording itself." } ] } ] }