Why Your Team Doesn't Do What You Ask

Your team is not ignoring your instructions. Most of the time, they never understood them.

You know the work so well that half of it lives in your head. So when you hand it off, you skip the steps that feel obvious to you. Then the task comes back wrong, or it doesn't come back at all, and you decide the problem is them.

What happened when a practice owner asked Claude to write her SOP

A practice owner I coach built a project in Claude to help her write SOPs. She did what I teach. She did a brain dump of the task, everything she knew, all at once.

Then Claude started asking her questions. A lot of them.

She got frustrated. In her head it was, just go. Create the SOP for me.

Claude kept asking. Then it told her this: if I don't understand what you need, your team member is not going to understand. You skipped four steps.

Four steps, in a task she knows cold.

When she told me about it on our call, I told her to keep answering Claude. She did. She ended up with an SOP that had every step in it, one she could hand to someone who could read it and go do the job.

Why your team doesn't do what you ask

When we tell our team to do something, we tell them what we think. We skip steps. Then the work stalls, and we get frustrated because they're not doing what we asked.

They stopped because they didn't understand it to begin with.

Your office manager is not in your head. Neither is your VA. Claude isn't either, and the difference is that Claude will tell you so. Your team usually won't.

How to give instructions your team can follow

Pick one task you hand off that keeps coming back wrong. Open Claude and brain dump how you do it, start to finish, the way you'd explain it out loud.

Then type this: Ask me questions until you could do this task without me. Don't write anything until you have what you need.

Answer every question, even the ones that feel obvious. The obvious ones are usually the steps you've been skipping.

When the SOP is done, hand it to the person who does the task and ask her to walk you through it. If she can, you have an instruction. If she can't, you still have a brain dump.

If you want help building these with your team, that is the work we do together in The Handoff. If you're newer to Claude and want the basics first, start with From Curious to Confident.

Write your next instruction like the person doing it has never met you.

Quick answers

Why doesn't my team follow my instructions?

Often they never fully understood them, because the person giving the instruction skipped steps that felt obvious to her. When the work stalls it looks like a motivation problem, but it is usually a clarity problem.

How do I write an SOP with Claude?

Start with a brain dump of how you do the task, then ask Claude to ask you questions until it could do the task without you. Answer every question, then have Claude turn your answers into step by step instructions someone else can follow.

How do I know if my instructions are clear enough?

Hand them to the person who does the task and ask her to walk you through it without your help. If she, or Claude, has to come back with questions, there are steps missing.

Sara Ritchie is a fractional COO who has worked in operations since 2007 and has coached more than 100 dental practices. She teaches women business owners to use Claude inside their real businesses through From Curious to Confident and works one on one with owners in The Handoff. More about Sara.