Seven tasks that follow one service recovery from the promise that created it to the checklist that keeps it honest. Everything you produce in one task becomes an input to a later one, so work them in order.
The situation
On 11 March, in a room you were not in, the Canada Post account team committed to a ninety-day service recovery on the Calgary distribution centre. Root cause investigation, remediation, weekly numbers to the customer, findings by 30 April.
You are the Prairie regional coordinator. Calgary is your depot. Nobody asked you first.
Calgary averaged 90.2% on-time in FY2025 against the 95% the customer's own supplier scorecard requires — the worst site in the network in all twelve months. Network Engineering has since found the largest measurable factor, and it is not something Canada Post can fix alone.
You are not being asked to find the cause. You are being asked to run the recovery: capture what was promised, track it, report it weekly, write down what the depot should actually do, brief leadership, answer an escalation that has been open four days, and check that none of it says more than the evidence supports.
Who is in this
| Person | Role | What they want from you |
|---|---|---|
| Joni Sherman | Regional Operations Director, Canada Post | One chart, one number, and no surprises in front of her own director |
| Grady Archie | Depot Manager, Calgary | A rule written down, short enough that the floor reads it |
| Lynne Robbins | Sales Manager, Canada Post | The recovery to hold, because she made the promise |
| Nestor Wilke | Director, Distribution Operations, Tailwind Traders | The weekly numbers he was promised, and an answer on three late shipments |
| Lidia Holloway | Procurement Manager, Tailwind Traders | The response in writing, not in a thread |
What you'll build
- Read the commitment
- Build the action tracker
- Produce the weekly numbers
- Write the depot procedure
- Build the leadership update
- Clear the escalation thread
- Verify what you produced
- What you learned
Read the commitment
By the end of this task, you will be able to turn a meeting transcript into a register of who owes what to whom by when — and to see which of those promises landed on you.
Starts with
- CanadaPost_Review_Meeting_Transcript.md
- CanadaPost_Ops_Network_Findings.md
You leave with
a commitment register splitting operations from account team, with every missing owner and missing date flagged rather than filled in.
Build the action tracker
By the end of this task, you will be able to turn a flat list of promises into a sequenced tracker with owners, dates and dependencies — one that keeps running while you are away.
Starts with
- Your commitment register from Task 1
- CanadaPost_Review_Meeting_Transcript.md
- CanadaPost_Ops_Network_Findings.md
You leave with
a ninety-day tracker with owners, dates, phases and dependencies, plus the email that hands it to the three people on it.
Produce the weekly numbers
By the end of this task, you will be able to turn a week of operational data into a short management summary with one chart behind it, check the figures against their source, and leave behind a prompt that produces the same thing next week.
Starts with
- CanadaPost_Ops_Recovery_Weekly.xlsx
- CanadaPost_Ops_Recovery_Weekly.csv
- CanadaPost_Ops_Network_Findings.md
You leave with
a management summary under 150 words, one named chart with its axes, every figure checked against the workbook, and a reusable prompt for next week.
Write the depot procedure
By the end of this task, you will be able to turn raw conversational notes into a procedure people will actually follow, written for the shift that has to follow it — and to recognise what in those notes must not travel with it.
Starts with
- CanadaPost_Ops_Depot_Notes.txt
- CanadaPost_Ops_Network_Findings.md
You leave with
a one-page procedure a dock supervisor can follow at six in the morning, with an exception path — and a list of what you removed from the notes and why.
Build the leadership update
By the end of this task, you will be able to turn a summary and a procedure into five slides for a director with fifteen minutes and four regions, and to say the uncomfortable part without sounding like you are blaming the customer.
Starts with
- Your weekly summary from Task 3
- Your procedure from Task 4
- CanadaPost_Ops_Network_Findings.md
- CanadaPost_Briefing_Deck_Template.pptx
You leave with
five slides — where the number is, what changed, what is not fixed, what you need from the customer, and what you are asking her for — with speaker notes for the difficult slide.
Clear the escalation thread
By the end of this task, you will be able to read a long thread cold, work out what is actually being asked, and close it with one reply instead of four — including the part where you say what you do not yet know.
Starts with
- CanadaPost_Ops_Escalation_Thread.md
- Your tracker from Task 2
- CanadaPost_Ops_Network_Findings.md
You leave with
one reply under 200 words that answers the question asked, states what is not yet known, gives a date, and commits to nothing that is not yours to commit.
Verify what you produced
By the end of this task, you will be able to audit a week's output against its sources, find the claims nothing supports, catch what should not be shared, and leave behind a checklist that does this again without you.
Starts with
- Everything you produced in Tasks 1 to 6
- CanadaPost_Ops_Recovery_Weekly.xlsx
- CanadaPost_Ops_Depot_Notes.txt
- CanadaPost_Ops_Network_Findings.md
You leave with
an audit of this week's outputs, and a verification checklist of under twelve items that whoever covers for you can run.
What you learned
You started with a promise you did not make and a depot that had missed its target for twelve months straight. Seven tasks later you have a register, a tracker, a weekly summary, a procedure, a deck, a closed thread and a checklist — and, more to the point, a method that outlasts this scenario.
Open this taskAbout 2 hours 25 minutes end to end, then a 12-minute wrap-up that pulls the method back out of the scenario so you can use it on your own week.
Your evidence
Nine files, in ResourceFiles/M02-operations/. Upload them to OneDrive before Task 1 — Copilot can only reference files stored there.
- CSV CanadaPost_Branch_Performance.csv 3 KB
- XLSX CanadaPost_Branch_Performance.xlsx 8 KB
- PPTX CanadaPost_Briefing_Deck_Template.pptx 76 KB
- TXT CanadaPost_Ops_Depot_Notes.txt 4 KB
- MD CanadaPost_Ops_Escalation_Thread.md 4 KB
- MD CanadaPost_Ops_Network_Findings.md 3 KB
- CSV CanadaPost_Ops_Recovery_Weekly.csv 1 KB
- XLSX CanadaPost_Ops_Recovery_Weekly.xlsx 7 KB
- MD CanadaPost_Review_Meeting_Transcript.md 7 KB
Two of them sit behind the recovery rather than inside it: the branch workbook carries Calgary's FY2025 month-by-month record, which is where the 90.2% baseline comes from, and the deck template is the Canada Post theme Task 5 builds in.
Two habits this scenario drills
Say what the evidence does not establish. The investigation found induction timing, and about a third of the gap is still unexplained. Every task asks you to carry that qualifier through. A coordinator who reports "we found the cause" has overstated the one document the whole recovery rests on.
Know what should not travel. The depot notes behind your procedure name an individual on medical leave and record a manager's opinion of a named supervisor. Tasks 4 and 7 make you find them before they reach a document the whole depot can open.
Tip
The prompts throughout are written as flowing instructions with # labels marking where the goal ends and the context, sources, and expectations begin. Copy them whole. When you start writing your own, keep the same four moves in the same order.