Spaghetti Don't Scale

You can't train someone to run your business if your business is just a tangled web of special cases.

I learned this the hard way.

Flashback a few years ago: I'm trying to create a simple checklist for loading trucks in the morning.

My crew chief, Big John, walks in and says,

"Jon, it's three trucks. We don't need to do this."

He was blowing me off, and I didn’t have the confidence I now have.

Two weeks later, we were onboarding nine crews and Big John starts dropping the ball.

"I can't do all of this," he says.
Exactly.

That’s why I wanted a checklist, John.

Here's the thing about exceptions: they start small and innocent. 

"Oh, this vendor still sends paper invoices?

No problem, we'll just handle those manually."

"This customer's been with us forever, let's give them a special rate."

"Betty prefers to forward calls to her cell instead of using the new phone system."

Before you know it, your business becomes a maze of one-offs, workarounds, and "that's just how we do it for them" scenarios.

You've built spaghetti.

And spaghetti don’t scale.

Why We Make Exceptions in the First Place

Business owners want to be liked.

By customers, vendors, employees…hell, by the guy who delivers office supplies.

Someone says they can't work with your new system and you think, "He's a good guy, been with us forever. We'll make an exception."

The exception becomes precedent.

The precedent becomes operational glue.

What started as a short-term win becomes a long-term cost that compounds daily.

The problem isn't that you made the exception.

The problem is that you didn't know where you were going.

What Exceptions Actually Cost You

Your Time. Spaghetti can't be delegated (well, at least). You end up holding the whole mess in your head because you're the only one who knows that Vendor A gets paid differently, Customer B gets invoiced manually, and Employee C has their own special way of doing things. You become the human database of exceptions.

Your Talent Ceiling. You can't scale if your operations rely on Cindy overhearing things at the water cooler. Context that lives in hallway conversations and institutional memory can't be transferred to new people. Your business becomes dependent on specific humans instead of systems.

Your Automation Potential. Here's a simple test: if you can't write it down, you can't delegate it to technology. AI and automation need clean, consistent data and processes. Exceptions break the pipeline before it even starts.

Your Leverage Ladder. You can't push work down the pyramid if you can't define it first. Every exception you maintain is work that stays stuck with you instead of moving to someone (or something) else.

The Illusion of Customer Service

Making exceptions doesn't equal providing great customer experience. In fact, it's often the opposite.

If your customers love calling you directly for everything, something's broken.

That's not customer intimacy—that's dependency.

Real customer loyalty comes from reliability, not random accommodation.

Your customers want to know what to expect, when to expect it, and how things work.

Consistency breeds trust.

Exceptions breed confusion.

Structured service actually enables both scale and consistency.

When everyone gets great service through the same channels, you can make that service better for everyone instead of making random exceptions for a few.

How to Start Untangling the Spaghetti

First, audit what's not written down. Look for any recurring "just this once" logic in your business. These are your exception patterns hiding in plain sight.

Second, codify default rules. "We ACH all vendors." "All hiring requests go through this form." "All customer communications happen through these channels." Make the rule, then stick to it (including you Mr/Mrs Owner - you are often the worst offender!)

Third, build flexibility at the right altitude. You can allow for overrides by exception…but at the management level, not the execution level. Let your manager make exceptions, but don't let your front-line people create their own system because they prefer sticky notes to CRM.

The Courage of Your Convictions

You have to know where you're going and then hold the line.

This is where a lot of business owners fail.

They make the policy but don't enforce it when the first person pushes back.

Here's what I've learned: half the people you thought would never adapt to your new system just do it.

They think about it for a minute and figure it out.

The ones who don't?

That tells you something important about whether they should be working with you anyway.

Every time you experience the other side of the change, when your new system actually works better, it gives you more confidence to improve the next thing.

But you have to get through the discomfort first.

Do You Want a Business or a Job?

A business is ordinary people doing ordinary work for ordinary compensation. 

If your operations require heroes at every level, you don't have a business. You have an expensive hobby.

If you're the only one who can untangle the spaghetti, you've built yourself a cage.

The business can't run without you because it's not really a business….it's just you, disguised as a company.

The goal isn't to eliminate all flexibility.

It's to create systems that can handle the predictable 90% automatically, so you can focus your human attention on the truly exceptional 10%.

As Thomas Sowell says, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs."

Yes, your new system might be worse at handling that one weird edge case.

But it's better at handling everything else.

That's the trade-off worth making.

Stop making exceptions. Start making systems.

Yallah Habibi,

Jon

PS

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Also, you should join Sagan to help find and upskill your global workforce.