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‍Mystery Steps and Email Misfires: Why Your Workflows Aren’t What You Think

Every business leader likes to believe they know exactly how work gets done in their organisation. You might assume all teams are following the same script, from sales and marketing to customer service. Spoiler alert: the reality is often quite different. The simple workflows you started with may have taken on a life of their own. Let’s explore why clearly defined workflows and consistency matter, and why the way you think work gets done might be a far cry from what’s actually happening.

The Great Workflow Assumption

On paper, you probably have processes for everything. Maybe there’s a standard onboarding checklist for new hires, a documented procedure for handling customer queries, or a flowchart for how a sale moves from lead to invoice. It’s comforting to assume everyone follows these processes to the letter. This is the Great Workflow Assumption … the belief that work in your organisation happens exactly as it’s supposed to.

In reality, people are people. Teams under pressure find shortcuts. New employees learn from Sandra down the hall that “actually, we do it this way.” Over time, what’s written in the handbook and what happens on Monday morning can drift apart. It’s nobody’s evil plan, it just happens. Everyone assumes the process is clear, but each person might have their own version of how it’s done. It’s like a company-wide game of whispers: the message (or process) changes a bit with each handoff.

Now, at a small scale, these differences might not be obvious. In a tight-knit 10-person team, you can possibly get away with informal understanding. But when you grow to 25, 50, 100, or more, those little deviations add up. The CEO still thinks “We have a smooth process for X,” while on the ground floor, X is being done five different ways (only one of which matches that neat diagram in the SOP binder). This isn’t about blame, it’s about visibility. You can’t fix what you don’t see, and assumptions can act like blinders.

When Workflows Go Rogue

So what does it look like when the ideal process in your head doesn’t match the messy reality? Here are some relatable examples of workflows going rogue in the wild:

• Duplicate Efforts: Two departments unknowingly enter the same data into two separate systems. Finance painstakingly updates a spreadsheet of sales numbers, not realising Sales has been updating the CRM with the exact same data. Double the work, zero extra value.
• Email Ping-Pong: A customer inquiry email gets forwarded to everyone and their dog because no one’s sure who owns the next step. The thread bounces around for days. By the time someone responds, the customer has given up, or worse, you have two people responding and contradicting each other.
• Mystery Steps: There’s an extra step in a process that everyone follows even though no one remembers why. (“We always wait for the Tuesday report before approving this, it’s just how it’s done.”) If you ask who produces that report and what it’s for, you get blank stares. It might as well be magic.
• Lost in Translation: Marketing hands off a task to Operations, assuming it’ll be done in a day. Operations schedules it for next week because, unbeknownst to Marketing, there’s an approval queue. Both teams are assuming the other knows this, and both are puzzled when nothing happens.
• The Silo Special: Each department has its own version of the process. The sales team thinks Legal is handling the contract after a deal closes. Legal thinks Sales is. Meanwhile, the customer is left waiting because of a classic miscommunication. Oops.

Sound familiar? These little workflow mishaps happen everywhere. Individually, they might just cause a laugh or a minor irritation (“Oh, Alex already did that? Whoops!”). But collectively, they point to a deeper issue: fragmented, inconsistent processes. In other words, what you think is a well-oiled machine might actually be a bunch of mismatched cogs spinning in different directions.

When workflows go off-script like this, each extra handoff or unclear step is a chance for something to go wrong, an error, a delay, or just wasted effort. It’s like a relay race where runners keep dropping the baton because no one quite knows where the next hand-off point is. Entertaining to watch, perhaps, but not great if you’re trying to win the race (or run a successful business!).

The Real Cost of Chaos

It’s easy to shrug off a bit of process chaos as the price of doing business. However, those duplicate tasks, email misfires and mystery steps have real consequences. Small inefficiencies multiply over time, slowing your teams down and creating confusion that can spread across the organisation.

Think about the minutes (or hours) lost each day to chasing information, clarifying misunderstandings, or doing something twice. It all adds up. In fact, knowledge workers admit to wasting over 5 hours a week just waiting for colleagues to provide info, or recreating work because they couldn’t get it. One estimate even pegs 20–30% of a business’s revenue is lost to these kinds of inefficient processes. That’s right … potentially a third of your organisation’s output effectively vanishes due to workflow hiccups. Ouch.

Beyond the hard numbers, there’s the human cost. Consistently messy processes drive employees up the wall. Talented people don’t enjoy wading through unnecessary admin or firefighting basic communication mix-ups. Morale can take a hit when every day is an obstacle course of avoidable hassles. New hires get confused because the “official” process they learned doesn’t match what people actually do. Teams start to get a bit cynical: “This is just how things are around here … chaotic.” It’s not exactly the culture you dreamed of, is it?

And then there’s scaling. Trying to scale a business on top of inconsistent processes is like trying to build a tower on jelly. If your way of working is ad-hoc or dependent on who remembers what, adding more people or more customers can turn cracks into chasms. You might manage with 50 employees muddling through, but at 150, that approach could buckle. Inconsistent service delivery leads to customer complaints. Inability to delegate (because processes only live in one veteran employee’s brain) means you hit a growth ceiling. In short, operational inconsistency is the enemy of scaling confidently.

Mapping: A Reality Check for Your Workflows

So, how do you go from assuming to actually knowing how work gets done in your business? The answer is to shine a light on those hidden, fragmented processes. This is where mapping comes in. Mapping means taking an outside, objective look at your operations, following the trail of tasks and handoffs across teams to see the real picture.

Think of it as a workflow reality check. An outside party (like our team at Yopla) comes in and essentially acts like a business process detective. We interview team members, observe how tasks move from one person to the next, and dig up those “unwritten rules” and workarounds everyone’s been relying on. The goal is to visualise what’s actually happening day to day. That might mean drawing a literal map (diagram) of a process: from the moment a customer raises a hand, to the point they get what they need, who touches the work and when, what tools are used, where information flows (or doesn’t).

The findings can be enlightening. Often, leadership expects to see a nice, straight line of steps A → B → C. Instead, the map comes back looking more like spaghetti: A → B → X → C → B again → D → ??? → Z. But here’s the thing, this isn’t about embarrassing anyone or highlighting faults. It’s about clarity. By getting everything out in the open, you can have those “Ah-ha!” moments: “So THAT’s why the onboarding process always takes forever!” or “No wonder we keep replying twice to the same customer, look at where the communication broke down.”

Mapping gives you a factual, shared view of your operations. It replaces assumption with evidence. Instead of guessing where things might be slowing down or who is doing duplicate work, you have it laid out in front of you. It’s the first step to fixing the issues because you can’t improve what you don’t understand. As the saying goes, “If you want to get somewhere, you need a map.” In this case, you need a map of your own business – warts and all.

From Chaos to Consistency: What You Gain

Uncovering the real workflows in your organisation isn’t just an academic exercise, it’s the starting point for tangible improvements. Once you see the inefficiencies and gaps, you can start closing them. Here are some big wins that come from mapping your processes and tidying them up:

• Spot inefficiencies: Immediately identify bottlenecks, redundant steps, or tasks being done manually that could be streamlined. (Why are we entering that data twice? Let’s fix that!)
• Improve consistency: Get everyone on the same page with best practices. When every team follows a unified process, you deliver a more reliable experience both internally and to customers. No more five versions of the “right” way floating around.
• Automate repetitive tasks: Find the tasks that make your team members internally sigh “not this again” and see if technology can take over. Automation is a lot easier once you’ve mapped out what’s happening. Free your folks from copy-pasting mania and let them focus on more valuable work.
• Build better customer experiences: When your internal house is in order, it shows on the outside. Fewer balls get dropped. Customers get quicker, more accurate responses because your team isn’t scrambling behind the scenes. A smooth backend process means a smoother front-end experience.
• Scale more confidently: Perhaps most importantly, you gain a solid foundation to grow on. Clear, documented workflows mean you can onboard new staff faster (they can actually read how things work), delegate tasks without worry, and handle higher volumes without things breaking. It’s like turning a rickety footpath into a paved road – much easier to add more traffic.
  

By mapping and then improving your processes, you turn the chaos into consistency. Teams know what to expect from each other. Work moves faster and with less fuss. You create a culture that values clarity and continuous improvement, rather than one that shrugs and says “that’s just how we do things.” It’s not about making everything rigid, it’s about creating smart guidelines so that everyone can do their best work without tripping over hidden obstacles.

A Friendly Nudge

If you’ve been reading this with a growing sense of “Oh dear, this is us,” don’t worry, you’re definitely not alone, and it’s never too late to straighten things out. The first step is simply recognising the gap between assumed workflows and real ones. The next step? Consider bringing in a fresh perspective to help map out the madness. Sometimes an outside pair of eyes can spot things insiders overlook.

This is exactly what we love doing at Yopla … acting as that friendly detective to help untangle your processes and get your organisation running like the well-oiled machine you thought you already had. No hard sell here, just a genuine offer – if any of the above rings true and you’re curious about uncovering what’s really going on under the hood, we’re here to chat. After all, every great journey starts with a good map, and we’d be delighted to help you draw yours. Here’s to smoother workflows and confident scaling!

At Yopla we use email tracking across our non-confidential correspondence to measure effectiveness, ensure we are delivering on our commitments, update our clients with information that's relevant to them and drive automations that give us back free time. But, we also recognise that it can pose privacy and security risks for all email recipients, particularly those who may not want to be tracked without their knowledge or consent. This is a situation where our outward technology, risks becoming your inward technology (check out the blog article on inward vs. outward tech here).

So, in this article we'll look at how email tracking works, how to tell if an email has a tracking pixel, and how, if you choose, to prevent email tracking on your device.

A 2023 Zippia report states that in 2023, businesses and consumers sent and received approximately 347.3 billion emails per day worldwide. This is projected to reach over 376 billion by 2025.

How Email Tracking Works

Email tracking is a common practice that involves embedding a tiny image, called a pixel, into an email message. When the recipient opens the email, the pixel sends back information to the sender, such as when and how many times the email was opened, what device and email provider were used, and even the approximate location of the recipient.

The tracking pixel is a 1x1 pixel image (for comparison, that's about the size of a pinhead) which is inserted into the header, footer or body of an email message. It's usually transparent or matches the colour of the background, so won't be visible to the naked eye. The pixel is linked to a server that records when the image is requested; this is usually when the recipient opens the email.

Email tracking pixels can collect a wide variety of information, for example:

• How many times the email was opened
• What device or devices were used
• What email provider was used
• What region or city the recipient is located in
• Whether the recipient clicked on any links in the email

Two-thirds of emails sent to personal accounts contained a tracking pixel, according to a review by Hey.‍

Email tracking pixels can also power remarketing, which allows for personalised ads to be shown to people based on their (in this instance) email activity.

If this sounds familiar, it is ... cookies do a very similar job but are small files stored on your browser when you visit a website enabling companies to track your browsing history across multiple websites ... pixels can only track your email activity within a specific email message.

Facebook do something similar with the Like button, Google across the websites that use their powerful website analytics tools and both Microsoft and Google across their web browsers. Amazon tracks users through its extensive use of cookies and personalised recommendation and bricks and mortar retailers through card use, loyalty cards and more.

32% of respondents agreed that they always accepted all cookies when prompted on visiting a website. The rate was highest among respondents aged 25 to 34 and lowest among the age group 45 to 54

How to Tell If an Email Has a Tracking Pixel

There are a couple of easy ways to tell if an email has a tracking pixel:

• Use an email service or app that alerts you to the presence of tracking pixels, such as Hey or Mailbird.

• Inspect the source code of the email message and look for any image tags that have a 1x1 size or a suspicious URL.

How to Prevent Email Tracking

If you want to prevent email tracking on your device, there are a few options:

• Use an email service or app that blocks or removes tracking pixels automatically, such as Hey or Mailbird. These services or apps will also show you which emails have tracking pixels and what information they are trying to collect.

• Use a browser extension or plugin that blocks or removes tracking pixels, such as Ugly Email or PixelBlock. These extensions or plugins will also let you see which emails contain tracking pixels and the info they're grabbing.

• Set your email client or app to block images by default, or view emails as plain text. This will prevent the pixel from loading and sending back information. It's worth noting that this will also affect the appearance and functionality of some emails. There's a great guide at The Verge that explains how to do this for Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail

• Use a VPN (virtual private network) service that masks your IP address and location. This will prevent the pixel from identifying your approximate location based on your IP address. However, this won't prevent the pixel from collecting other information, such as when and how many times you opened the email.

Conclusion

Email tracking is a widespread practice that helps marketers and salespeople measure and improve their campaigns and can improve customer engagement and experience. However, understanding how these technologies work, and putting yourself in control, is crucial to ensuring that they aren't infringing on your privacy and comfort.

If you would like to find out more about how email tracking works, the good, the bad and the ugly, please do get in touch!

Proper digital transformation strategies have nothing to do with buying the latest software. They are about fundamentally changing how your organisation works, how it creates value, and how it serves both your people and your customers. It’s a complete rewiring of your business from the inside out.

What Are Digital Transformation Strategies Really About?

Most leaders we talk to are sick of the industry noise around digital transformation. They're constantly being sold complicated platforms and vague "digital journeys" that promise the world but deliver little more than headaches. The problem is that most of these so-called strategies begin with a technology shopping list, not with a solid grasp of the human and process challenges that need solving.

At Yopla, we see this completely differently. Real transformation starts with people. It's about slicing through the operational fog that bogs your teams down and bringing clarity to the decisions that matter. A genuine strategy doesn't just chase new tech; it aligns your organisation around shared goals, using technology as a precision tool to enable your people.

Moving beyond the buzzwords.

The phrase "digital transformation" has been thrown around so much that it has become almost meaningless. For any strategy to have a real impact, it has to be rooted in tangible, measurable outcomes. So, instead of focusing on implementing some big new system, a better approach is to zero in on fixing a specific, frustrating process.

Does your sales team waste hours manually pulling together reports instead of talking to clients? Do your finance and operations teams argue over conflicting data from a mess of different spreadsheets? These are not technology problems at their core. They are process and communication problems.

A solid strategy tackles these issues by asking some tough questions first:

• Where is time being haemorrhaged in our current workflows?.
• What information do our teams need to make faster, smarter decisions?.
• How can we establish a single source of truth that everyone in the business trusts?.

By getting honest answers, you start to build a strategy that delivers a real dividend in free time and sharper operational focus. You can dig deeper by exploring what digital transformation actually is and why this distinction is critical.

A foundation for lasting change.

Putting people first is essential because it helps you avoid costly mistakes. When you invest in a new platform before you've streamlined the process it's meant to support, you risk just automating the existing chaos. You end up with a bad process that just runs faster, but it isn't any better. This is a classic pitfall that leads to failed projects, wasted money, and burnt-out teams.

The most common mistake is focusing on technology before understanding the people and process problems. A successful strategy starts by identifying operational friction and co-creating solutions with your team.

Our view is that a successful strategy must build a foundation for change that lasts. It should empower your team with the tools and insights they need to own their processes long after any consultants have gone. This is the only path to what we call digital sovereignty—building the capability inside your own organisation so that you control your future. This is how you create a business that is more open, more capable, and operationally resilient.