Audit the workflows that slow your
team down.

Agreed by whom, and recorded where? A verbal yes on a call and a countersigned document are both technically "agreed". This is the step where your two slipped clients happened.

Define agreed as "signed scope PDF filed in the client folder" and nothing less.

You almost certainly have a Notion template for this, but the doc does not link it, so each person rebuilds from the last client they touched.

Paste the template link directly into the step.

The document ends after workspace setup, so nobody knows whether onboarding is done at first invoice, first deliverable, or the 30-day check-in.

Both the account lead and the design lead review the brief in stage 3. Because neither is named as the approver, the brief typically waits one to two days for whoever moves first.

One reviewer approves, the other is optional input. Say which is which.

Chasing the signature is nobody’s named job, so it happens when someone remembers. That is the longest wait in the whole process.

Stage 2 writes a call summary and stage 3 writes a project brief, and roughly 70% of the content is the same. One document could serve both.

Write the brief live during the call, then send it as the summary.

Same eight fields, typed twice, and they drift apart within a month.

The doc describes what the email should contain but does not include the text, so someone rewrites roughly the same 200 words per client — around 25 minutes each time.

Save it as a snippet with three fill-in fields: client name, dates, call link.

Six folders and two subfolders, created manually every time, occasionally with different names.

Duplicate a template folder instead of building it.

Named in the doc as a step but with no list of who should be in the channel by default.

Referenced as "the usual template" — new starters have no way of finding it.

Given that scope is the weak point of this process, the template should be one click away.

"The client folder on the drive" means three different places depending on who reads it.

The process covers the initial scope but says nothing about who can say yes to extra work during onboarding, which is where margin usually leaks.

Anything above an agreed value goes to the account lead, in writing.

With a team this size, one person on holiday stops onboarding entirely.

Context arrives as a message rather than a record, so anything not repeated in Notion is lost when the thread scrolls away.

Handoff is complete only when the brief exists in Notion, not when the message is sent.

Nobody confirms receipt, so missing files are discovered during build rather than during onboarding.

Still written as mandatory, which makes the rest of the document look less trustworthy.

The described send-and-countersign order no longer matches how the tool is set up.