The sticky note test

Three names
and a blank

A test that costs nothing and stings a little. At your next leadership meeting, hand everyone a sticky note, ask one question, and read the answers out loud.

You will get three different names and a blank.

Run it now, ninety seconds

No sign up, no email, nothing to install. Nine taps on a phone.

Who owns making sure customers do not leave?
Sarah
Me, I think
Marketing?
Left blank

Four people, four answers, one of them nothing

In the room

How to run it for real

Four minutes, no prep, no slides. Do it at the top of a meeting rather than the end, because a room is honest before it is tired.

01

One note and a pen each. Laptops closed.

The closed laptop is half of it. Anybody typing is looking something up, and the answer you want is the one they already carry.

02

Read the question once. Do not explain it.

Explaining it is coaching the room to the answer you were hoping for.

03

Sixty seconds of silence. One name per note.

Their own name is allowed. Blank is allowed. Say that part out loud or nobody will use it.

04

Read every note in one pass, without discussion.

Then stop talking and let the room look at what it just produced.

You are not looking for the right answer. You are looking at the spread. Three different names is a disagreement your team did not know it was having. A blank is a seat nobody owns.

Ninety seconds

Or run it right here

You do not have the room in front of you, so answer for it. Nine questions, one at a time. For each one, the only thing that matters is whether your team would come back with one name, several, or nothing.

The test

The other half

What to do with the blank

A blank is not a people problem. Not an effort problem. Not a talent problem. Nobody can own what was never written down, and the meeting that was supposed to fix it is the same meeting where it got lost. Five steps, in order, none of them optional.

01

Write it down as a seat, not a topic.

"Retention" is a topic. "Owns keeping customers past month three" is a seat. A topic can be discussed forever. A seat is either held or empty.

02

Put exactly one name on it.

Two owners is zero owners. If the honest answer is you, write your own name, then count how many seats you now hold. That number is the real finding.

03

Give the seat one number.

If nobody can name the number that proves the seat is working, the seat is still blank. It just has a name on it now.

04

Say it out loud, in the room, this week.

A seat assigned in private is a seat that was not assigned. The owner has to hear it and not object.

05

Look at it again in seven days.

This is where it dies. Everybody nods on Tuesday, and by the following Tuesday the chart is a document nobody has opened.

Steps one to four take an afternoon, and almost any team can do them. Step five is the whole game, and it is the only one that needs a system.

Where we come in

The blank is not a people problem

One page. Every seat has one owner, every owner has a number, and a weekly Delta Meeting that ends in names and dates instead of nods. That much you could build in a spreadsheet, and most people have, twice.

Here is the part nobody else has. AI agents hold seats on the same chart as your people, doing logged work that shows up in the same weekly review. And Ollie, the intelligence layer underneath, reads all of it and tells you Monday morning what moved, what stalled, and what quietly lost its owner again.

Ollie, the intelligence layer under OTP, holding a magnifying glass

Which is how step five stops depending on somebody remembering.

Humans are free, every one of them. You just watched a chart get drawn in ninety seconds, so you already know how long the real one takes.

In practice

What it looks like a month in

Three organizations already running on one page. Names withheld, and every figure below is read off their live charts rather than collected as a testimonial.

87meetings in five weeks

Franchise sales and support

Eight people, one shared page, and every one of those meetings ending in front of the same list.

56numbers on one scorecard

Digital commerce consultancy

Mapped in their first month. Nine people who can each name the number their seat is judged on.

11AI agents holding seats

Marketing agency

Running the whole company on it: 281 meetings, 509 readings, and agents logging their work beside the people.

Fifteen minutes

Do the first three steps with me

Bring whatever the test turned up. In fifteen minutes we write each one down as a seat, put one name on it, and name the number that proves it is working. That is steps one to three, done, on your actual organization rather than a demo of somebody else's.

Step five, the one where it dies, is what OTP is for. Your screen, no slides, no discovery call theater.

Dawson Sieradzky15 min

Straight from his own calendar, so what you see is what is actually free. Slots open 3 hours out. You get a Google Meet link the moment you book.

Reading his calendar...

The sticky note test

Hand everyone one note and a pen. Laptops closed. Read one question out loud and do not explain it. Sixty seconds of silence, one name per note, their own name allowed and blank allowed. Collect and read every note in one pass without discussion. You are not looking for the right answer. You are looking at the spread. Three different names is a disagreement your team did not know it was having. A blank is a seat nobody owns.

The questions

#QuestionNames collectedOwner agreed
1Who owns making sure customers do not leave?
2Who owns where the next ten customers come from?
3Who owns cash in the bank ninety days out?
4Who owns whether what we sold actually ships?
5Who owns who we hire and who we let go?
6Who owns the one number that says the week worked?
7Who owns the thing that broke last quarter, so it does not break again?
8Who owns deciding what we are not going to do?
9Who owns telling you something you do not want to hear?
10Your own question. The one you would not ask out loud.

What to do with the blank

  1. Write it down as a seat, not a topic. "Retention" is a topic. "Owns keeping customers past month three" is a seat.
  2. Put exactly one name on it. Two owners is zero owners. If the answer is you, count how many seats you now hold.
  3. Give the seat one number. No number means the seat is still blank, it just has a name on it now.
  4. Say it out loud, in the room, this week. A seat assigned in private was not assigned.
  5. Look at it again in seven days. This is where it dies, and it is the only step that needs a system.

OTP, orgtp.com. One page: every seat has one owner, every owner has a number, and a weekly Delta Meeting that ends in names and dates. AI agents hold seats on the same chart as your people, and Ollie tells you Monday morning what quietly lost its owner again. Humans are free. Run the test online and book fifteen minutes at orgtp.com/blank