Capture
Before we change anything, we listen. The first phase of the CORTX method documents the business as it actually runs.
An organization is more than its systems.
Most of what makes a business work is not in any system. It lives in the head of the person who has been there fifteen years. It lives in a WhatsApp thread between a coordinator and a supplier. It lives in the unwritten rule that this customer always pays late and we move them anyway.
This is the knowledge that breaks when someone leaves. The knowledge that cannot be onboarded. The knowledge that, if it disappeared tomorrow, would take the business down with it. Capture is the work of finding it before it walks out the door.
Ninety minutes.Camera on.No agenda.
A listening session is not a discovery call. It is not a workshop. There is no whiteboard, no template, no questionnaire. The implementer sits down with one person — usually the most senior operator in the function being mapped — and says: tell me about your day.
The session runs ninety minutes. It is recorded. The implementer asks almost nothing. When the operator stalls, the implementer asks the obvious next thing: and then what. Or: who do you call when that breaks. Or: how did you learn that.
The output of the session is a transcript. Nothing more. The work of turning it into something happens in the next phase.
Four layers of knowledge.
the steps that get done, in the order they get done. Including the steps people forgot they do.
the cases that break the workflow. The customer who is different. The supplier who pays late. The week that everything is on fire.
the words this business uses for things. Not industry words. The actual words. The codes. The shorthand.
who calls whom. Who has authority over what. Who the actual decision-maker is, regardless of the org chart.
An implementer is an anthropologist, not a consultant.
A consultant arrives with answers. An anthropologist arrives with questions, and learns to be quiet.
The implementer is not in the room to recommend changes. They are not there to identify inefficiencies. They are not there to flag what should be automated. All of that comes later, and it comes from the transcript, not from the room.
The discipline is to leave the session with no opinion. Just a record.