Control
Spot checks and an approval log for your bots
In short
How to spot-check a big team, keep a record of what you approved, and teach your managers, with the story of a price typo.
Layers of managers make a big team easier to run, and easier to lose touch with. Chapter 9 adds two habits that keep you close to the real work: weekly spot checks and a simple approval log.
Spot checks
Once a week, pick one worker Bot at random and read its actual output, not a summary. What did the customer Bot write this week? What did the research Bot suggest, and why? Most weeks it's fine. Some weeks you'll find drift: a tone that got too formal, a habit you didn't ask for, a source you wouldn't trust. Fix it in the job card. It takes about fifteen minutes.
The day it went sideways
In the book's story, a busy Thursday promotion fills the queue. You approve it all in a hurry. An hour later a reader asks whether a price is right. It isn't: a typo, missed by the quality Bot because a promotional price was supposed to look low. The response is the lesson. Fix it, tell the people who noticed honestly, honor the low price for anyone who already bought, then look at why it happened and change the process.
Keep a record
Have your head office manager keep a daily log of what you approved: date, item, business and Bot. When a customer asks about an email, a number looks odd, or you can't remember changing a price, the log answers it in seconds.
Checklist
- Each week, read one random worker Bot's raw output.
- Fix any drift in that Bot's job card.
- Keep a daily approval log: date, item, business, Bot.
- Once a week, scroll the log and ask whether each yes was worth it, and what the Bots could have handled alone.
- When a manager brings a clear recommendation with the risk spelled out, tell it so and add that example to its card.
- When a manager brings something vague, send it back and ask what exactly, how urgent and what it suggests.
- After any mistake, find both causes: what you did and what the Bot didn't know.
Your judgment is the product
Anyone can set up Bots. What makes your businesses yours is your taste, your sense of what's fair to customers and your eye for what's good enough. Every approval puts a bit of that into the world, so don't let volume turn it into rubber-stamping.