The Handoff Is Where Things Get Interesting

Have you ever watched a task travel through three departments and somehow lose its owner along the way?

Everyone touched it. Everyone forwarded it. Everyone assumed someone else had finished it.

The task is now wandering the building with a visitor badge.

Welcome to the handoff.

We tend to focus on individual responsibilities: what procurement does, what finance checks, what the project manager monitors, what the auditor reviews.

But some of the most revealing questions live between those responsibilities.

Who confirms that what was ordered actually arrived?

Who tells finance that the supplier’s details have changed?

Who makes sure an approved change reaches the people doing the work?

Who checks whether management’s promised action addressed the issue raised?

Each person may complete their own step correctly while something important falls through the gap between them.

Imagine a contractor submits an invoice for additional work. The project manager confirms that the work happened. Finance confirms that the invoice adds up.

Both checks matter.

But who confirmed that the additional work was authorized, that the price followed the contract, and that it had not already been billed elsewhere?

That answer needs an owner.

The same problem appears in communication. Someone writes a report, someone presents it, and someone receives it. Yet the decision needed may remain unclear. A beautifully formatted report can still leave its reader wondering, “What exactly do you want me to do?”

This is one reason I enjoy connecting subjects across LG3. Construction, fraud, project management, AI, and communication often meet in the same working day.

A document passes from one person to another. A decision becomes an instruction. An instruction becomes a payment. At each step, information needs to travel with it.

Try looking at one handoff in your own work this week.

Ask three questions:

What is being passed along?

Include the supporting information, approval, or explanation the next person needs.

Who accepts responsibility for the next step?

A department name may be too broad. Who actually picks it up?

How do we know the handoff is complete?

An email being sent tells you it left someone’s inbox. You may need confirmation that it was received, understood, and acted upon.

You do not need to map the entire organization before lunch. Start with one recurring task that causes confusion, delay, or rework.

Follow it across the gap.

You may find that a clearer handoff saves everyone a surprising amount of chasing, checking, and muttering at their screens.

And I think we can all agree that our screens get quite enough muttering already.

Learn it. Grow it. Own it.