What I’d automate first if I started over

Tactical systems + sharp insights for ops leads, founders, and async-native teams.

Author

Pietro Sassanelli
June 25, 2025

🧠 OPERATOR TRUTH OF THE MONTH

Automating a broken process doesn’t make it better.
It just makes it harder to kill.

🔥 IF I HAD TO START OVER

Let’s say I wake up tomorrow with zero stack.
No tools. No team. No ops graveyard in Notion.
Just me, a laptop, and the horrifying realization that Slack is empty.

Where do I begin?

I don’t rebuild everything.
I don’t sign up for 14 tools that promise “scale without effort.”
I don’t pretend Looms and emojis are culture.

Here’s what I actually do:

I build just enough system to:

  • Know what’s happening

  • Know what matters

  • And avoid being the bottleneck for both

Because the truth is, most ops pain comes from things starting the wrong way, not ending the wrong way.

Work doesn’t get dropped because your dashboard sucks.
It gets dropped because it started in someone’s head, stayed in a DM, and died in a comment thread.

So no, I wouldn’t set up a CRM first.
Or a Notion wiki.
Or some beautifully color-coded ClickUp cathedral with no workflows under the surface.

I'd do this 👇

🛠 1. INTELLIGENT INTAKE

What: A simple form that routes new work to the right place.
Why: Most chaos starts with fuzzy beginnings.
How:

  • Typeform → Notion database → auto-tagged by category

  • Or Airtable form → routed via n8n to Slack + board

🧠 No request should start in someone’s brain or someone else’s DM.

⚙️ 2. STATUS VISIBILITY

What: An async “who’s doing what” update
Why: Because meetings are just what we use when dashboards suck
How:

  • Notion database with status fields + filtered views

  • Automated daily/weekly summaries pushed to Slack

Bonus: Add an agent that flags blockers based on stale statuses. We’re testing this now.

🔁 3. FEEDBACK LOOPS

What: Retros that don’t get lost in Notion purgatory
Why: No system survives contact with reality
How:

  • Notion template with “Start / Stop / Continue”

  • Scheduled reminder via Slack/n8n

  • Auto-archive or tag insights for next sprint

🧠 Most teams don’t need more speed.
They need a tighter feedback loop with fewer assumptions.

🔩 THE FOUNDATION FOR ALL 3?

You guessed it: a real system.

That’s why I built this:
🎁 The 5-Layer Async System Template
Includes:

  • Source of truth mapping

  • Trigger + flow setup

  • Visibility + feedback layers

  • Three clean Notion databases

  • No forms, no fluff, just async clarity

🧭 How smart teams already do this

If you're wondering “does anyone actually do this well?”
Yes — and they've made parts of it public:

👁 GitLab’s All-Remote Playbook

No headquarters. No status standups. No mystery.
GitLab built a global async company by making visibility the default — with a public handbook that governs how decisions, tasks, and updates move.
If it’s not documented, it doesn’t exist.

🧠 Basecamp’s Internal Ops Philosophy

Basecamp isn’t for everyone — but their take on internal calm is a masterclass in non-frantic work. They build systems that reduce urgency by design.
Their Shape Up method avoids over-planning and over-automation by starting with clarity.

🧪 WHAT WE’RE BUILDING THIS MONTH

We’re building this the same way we preach it:

If you’re building anything async, automated, or ESG-integrated — we’ve got something coming for you.

📌 SHARP INSIGHT TO STAY WITH YOU

Burnout doesn’t come from effort.
It comes from wasted effort.

AI won’t fix ops.
Systems will.

Start with:

  • clear triggers

  • async visibility

  • simple feedback loops

Then automate the obvious.
Human the complex.

💬 FEELING THIS?

Reply with your most annoying handoff problem —
I’ll either tell you how to automate it, or why it shouldn’t exist.

Catch you next month,
– Pietro
Founder, Opsethic