Slide 1 of 4
Encode what happens, not what should
The documented process and the practiced one differ in every organization. A play built from the documented one is rejected by the people who run the real one.
Build and run your first RevPlay
DoLesson 2 of 12Choose a motion worth encoding
Auditing how your team runs it today
Produce a written, honest account of how the motion runs today (its real steps, owners and failure points) so the play you build encodes reality rather than the version in the handbook.
23 minIntermediate
Part 1 of 5
Document the practiced process, not the published one
Every revenue organization has two versions of its motions: the one in the enablement deck and the one that happens. They are rarely the same, and the gap is not laziness; it is the accumulated result of people adapting to what actually works. A play built from the published version gets rejected by the people running the practiced one, and you will spend the next month arguing about the play instead of the motion.
So start by watching. Take five accounts that recently went through the motion end to end and rebuild what was actually done to each: which step happened, in what order, who did it, how long the gaps were, where it stalled. Work from the record (activity history, notes, the opportunity timeline) rather than from memory. Memory reliably reports the ideal path.
Part 2 of 5
Sort the variation into three buckets
With five accounts side by side, the differences between them are the whole point of the exercise. Every one falls into a bucket, and each bucket has a different destination in the play, which is what turns an audit into a design.
The sort also tells you early whether the motion is ready at all. If almost everything lands under judgment, you are looking at a skill rather than a process, and encoding it will not help yet.
- Judgment — a person weighed something specific to the account. This becomes an approval step, never a rule.
- Drift — the same work done differently for no discoverable reason. This is what the play standardizes, and the reason to build it.
- Segment — a genuine difference driven by account size, region or motion. This becomes an eligibility condition, or a second play.
Part 3 of 5
Write down where it breaks
The last column of the audit is the most useful one: for each account, where did the motion lose time? A handoff nobody picked up, a step that waited on research, an approval that sat for four days. These are the points where the play will pay for itself, because they are the ones an agent can prepare in advance rather than leave someone to start from nothing.
Keep the finished audit somewhere durable. Your artifact library is the right home: it is the operating library your agents reference when they generate work, and it is versioned, so in a quarter you will be able to see exactly what the motion looked like before the play existed.
Part 4 of 5
What the finished audit looks like
Concretely, the deliverable is one page per account, five accounts, same format. A worked line from one of them: "Day 0: pilot ended, result summary sent by SE. Day 9: AE sent follow-up (nine-day gap: AE was at QBRs). Day 9: no reply. Day 23: second follow-up, different thread, no reference to the first. Day 40: account marked dormant by manager during pipeline review." Every line is a fact from the activity record with a date and an owner, and the gaps are recorded as deliberately as the actions.
Part 5 of 5
The four lists underneath it
Under the five accounts go three lists, one per bucket: the variations you judged to be judgment, with what the person weighed; the drift, meaning the same work done in a different order or at a different time for no reason; and the segment differences, the ones that are real and structural.
Then a fourth list, which is the one that justifies the whole exercise: where each account lost the most time. In the worked line above it is the nine-day gap, and that gap, not the outreach copy, is what the play will fix, because an agent can have the follow-up prepared on day 2 whether or not the AE is at QBRs.
That format is the whole method. If you can produce it for five accounts you have everything the builder will ask you for: the trigger, the sequence, the timing, the owners, and the failure points that justify encoding it at all.
Do this in the product
Audit the motion
- Choose one motion from the previous lesson that passed all three repeatability tests.
- Pick five accounts that completed it recently. Include at least one that stalled and one that went badly, not five clean runs.
- For each account, reconstruct the real sequence from the activity record: step, owner, date, and the gap since the previous step.
- Mark every difference between the five as judgment, drift or segment.
- Add a final note per account: the single point where the motion lost the most time.
- Save the audit to your artifact library so the play you build next has a documented starting point.
Key questions
You should be able to answer each of these from memory before opening it. Recalling the answer is what makes it stick; recognizing it when you read it does not.
What are the three buckets every variation between accounts falls into, and where does each go?
Judgment becomes an approval step, never a rule. Drift is what the play standardizes and the reason to build it. Segment becomes an eligibility condition or a separate play.
Why reconstruct the motion from the activity record rather than by asking the team?
Memory reports the ideal path. The record shows what was actually done, in what order, and where the gaps were, which is what the play has to encode.
Almost every variation you found lands in the judgment bucket. What does that mean?
The motion is a skill rather than a process. Encoding it will not help yet, because there is no stable sequence to encode.
What to take away
- Work from the activity record, not from memory. Memory reports the ideal path.
- Record the gaps as carefully as the actions. The nine-day wait is usually what the play fixes, not the copy.
- Judgment becomes an approval step. Drift is what the play standardizes. Segment becomes eligibility.
- If nearly everything is judgment, the motion is a skill and not yet a process. Do not encode it.
Teach this lesson
The argument in 4 slides, for presenting it to your team
Slide 2 of 4
Five real accounts beats one ideal path
- Pick accounts that finished, not just the ones that went well
- Include at least one that stalled — the stall is where the play earns its keep
- Record what was actually done, in order, with who did it
Slide 3 of 4
Three kinds of variation
- Judgment — keep it human; it becomes an approval, not a rule
- Drift — the same work done differently for no reason; the play standardizes this
- Segment — a real difference by size or motion; this becomes eligibility, or a second play
Slide 4 of 4
The audit is an artifact
Write it into your artifact library. Agents reference what you keep there, and next quarter you will want to know what the motion looked like before the play.
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