Company Brain

Guides

How to choose your first issue

The first issue determines whether the trial produces useful evidence. Choose an issue that is painful, repeated, source-backed, and reviewable.

You should leave with one issue candidate and a clear reason it is worth processing first.

Use this filter

  • It recurs often enough that better guidance would matter.
  • The process is spread across several artifacts or people's memory.
  • There is a reviewer with authority to approve or reject the output.
  • The team would use a good SOP, decision tree, macro, or gap report this week.
  • The issue can be described in one sentence.

Good first issues

  • Refund escalation confusion.
  • Onboarding handoff failure.
  • Billing dispute handling.
  • Account access issue.
  • Implementation blocker.
  • Bug-report triage.
  • Unclear escalation path.

Avoid these first

  • Whole-company knowledge cleanup.
  • Generic document search.
  • A process with no source material.
  • A politically sensitive policy area with no reviewer commitment.
  • A request for autonomous decisions or workflow execution.

Read next