A Rule Nobody Checks Is Just a Preference

I have a rule on this site. Nothing gets published without a share image.

Not a suggestion. A rule. If you have ever posted a link and watched it land in somebody feed as a gray box with no picture, you know why. The writing can be the best thing you did all month and it will scroll past a thousand people anyway, because the thing competing for attention is not your paragraph. It is a rectangle.

Yesterday one of my own posts went out without one.

Here is the number, counted out of my own archive this morning. 528 published articles. One of them missing its share image. That is 99.81 percent, which sounds like a grade you would frame.

It is not, and the reason is the whole lesson. It applies to your business whether you publish anything or not.

For months that rule has lived in the right place. There is a step at the end of every publishing run that goes back through everything published that day, checks each one for an image, and refuses to call the run finished until every single one has it. That is not a reminder. That is a gate. Reminders get ignored by tired people. Gates do not care how tired you are.

The one that slipped through came in another door. Two systems publish into this site. The one I built runs that check at the end of every run. The article that went out without an image did not come from that system.

So the rule was never broken. The rule was just never installed on the second door.

That is almost always what is happening when a business has a standard that keeps getting missed. The owner thinks he has a discipline problem. He goes and talks to people about caring more. Nothing changes, and now everybody feels bad on top of it. What he actually has is a coverage problem. The standard is enforced on one path and merely hoped for on the others.

Go look at your own shop for a minute.

You have a rule that every new customer gets a call back the same day. Is that enforced when the lead comes in through the website form? Probably, because the form does something. Is it enforced when somebody calls the shop phone and nobody picks up? Is it enforced when a customer messages your business page on a Saturday night? Same rule, three doors, and I would bet money it is only wired into one of them.

You have a rule that every job gets photographed before and after. Enforced when your best guy does it. Hoped for when the new guy does it.

You have a rule that nothing leaves without an invoice attached. Enforced in the software. Hoped for on the job you wrote on a napkin because the customer was standing right there.

The test is simple and it is uncomfortable. For every rule you say you have, ask what happens if somebody skips it. If the honest answer is nothing happens, or somebody might notice eventually, that is not a rule. That is a preference you have strong feelings about.

Three things I do about this, and none of them need software you do not already have.

One. Write the rule as a check, not as a value. Not we always include a share image. Instead, at the end of the day this list gets reviewed and anything missing an image gets fixed before we call it done. The first is a belief. The second is an action a person performs at a time.

Two. Put the check at the end, not the beginning. Anything at the beginning competes with getting started. Anything at the end competes with going home, and wanting to go home is a far better enforcement mechanism than good intentions.

Three. When something slips, fix the door, not the person. The temptation yesterday was to feel sloppy about it. That accomplishes nothing. The useful move is to find the path with no gate on it and put one there.

So that is what today is for. The missing image gets generated, the post gets fixed, and the second door gets the same check the first one has.

One in 528 is not a crisis. It is a map, and it is pointing straight at the gap.

If you want gates like that built into your own business, in accounts you own, that is the work I do. Start at The LeadFlow Pro or call me at (903) 500-8898.