A system earns its keep by deleting a decision

Every founder audit starts with time saved, and that is the wrong first question. Minutes come back cheap. Attention does not.

The systems I actually keep have one thing in common: they take a recurring decision off my desk entirely. Not faster, gone. A pricing rule that no longer needs a meeting. A weekly scan that decides which corridors are worth a second look before I ever open the tab.

So the test I run now is blunt. What decision does this delete, and would I trust it to make that call on a bad day. If the answer is none, it is a shortcut, not a system, and shortcuts quietly rot.