🧪 Duct-Tape Test: How low-value work is costing you money and future growth

Archi­tect­ing AI-cen­tric Sys­tems

End the Duct-Tape Era.

Prepare the Soil.
Plant the Systems.
Let AI Bloom — and Your Organisation Grow.

Cus­tom Notion sys­tems that struc­ture your oper­a­tions and unlock your AI-cen­tric trans­for­ma­tion.

From Manual Mayhem to AI-Ready Momentum. In 3 Phases.

ROI Phase

Reveal what’s bro­ken and what’s worth fix­ing

Build Phase

Pro­to­type and deploy the sys­tem

Refine Phase

Oper­a­tionalise, auto­mate, and AI-enable­ment

We under­stand your needs, map your process­es, untan­gle tool sprawl, and define what a future-fit sys­tem looks like—plus the ROI of get­ting it right.

I turn our find­ings into a func­tion­al Notion pro­to­type. Your team tests and I improve.

Once test cycle end­ed, it’s rolled out to your team—with train­ing and sup­port for smooth adop­tion.

We opti­mise based on real need. This is where we lay­er in smart automa­tions, migrate data, beau­ti­fy the work­space, and inte­grate AI-cen­tric work­flows that unlock scale.

What is System 🧠 Smart

A busi­ness sys­tems con­sul­tan­cy that helps fast-grow­ing busi­ness­es reclaim con­trol of their oper­a­tions — by dis­solv­ing siloed infor­ma­tion, iden­ti­fy­ing work­flow bot­tle­necks, design­ing inte­grat­ed sys­tems, and align­ing teams.

OPS First. AI Next.

Because AI can’t save bro­ken ops. It scales what’s already there — good or bad.

AI is rewrit­ing how organ­i­sa­tions oper­ate — and many are strug­gling to keep up.
This shift demands aware­ness, trans­paren­cy, and access to infor­ma­tion.
Organ­i­sa­tions held togeth­er by duct-taped sys­tems won’t sur­vive it.

Unlike most Notion con­sul­tants — who are main­ly tool enthu­si­asts or sell quick-fix tem­plates — I design smart sys­tems that hold up when things scale, teams grow, and AI reshapes the land­scape.

My work is ground­ed in decades of oper­a­tional archi­tec­ture — not just tool famil­iar­i­ty — which makes all the dif­fer­ence when the real chal­lenge isn’t build­ing a siloed con­struc­tion, but embed­ding it into how the busi­ness actu­al­ly runs.

Only then does it become sys­tem smart.

Clea Hernandez

Founder of Mytho­graph

It’s the best imme­di­ate ROI I’ve ever got­ten for my busi­ness.

I’ve been preach­ing this for years:

Don’t just do the work.
Think about how the work works.
Trans­late it into sys­tems.
Con­nect the dots across your peo­ple, process­es, and tools.

With 30+ years in high-trust oper­a­tional envi­ron­ments — from the Swiss Stock Exchange to pri­vate equi­ty, pri­vate bank­ing, city gov­ern­ment to fast-mov­ing ser­vice busi­ness­es — I bring the depth it takes to build sys­tems that last.

At the heart of my work is a pro­pri­etary 3 Types of Knowl­edge frame­work — designed to struc­ture your back­end log­ic around what actu­al­ly dri­ves the busi­ness.

This allows us to build inte­grat­ed Notion work­spaces that do more than organ­ise — they become the foun­da­tion, the fer­tile soil, for real AI-cen­tric trans­for­ma­tion.

Still feel like you’re duct-taping your operations?

These are sig­nals that your organ­i­sa­tion isn’t AI-ready. Yet.

Projects stall because infor­ma­tion lives in too many places—and no one owns the flow.

Team mem­bers chase con­text across tools, meet­ings, and chan­nels.

Hand­offs break. Dead­lines drift. You’re man­ag­ing workarounds, not work­flows.

Everyone’s “busy,” but no one knows where the real work stands.

The Problem Isn’t the Tools. It’s the Lack of System Design.

Your tools aren’t bro­ken.
They’re just reflect­ing what’s under­neath:

  • Unmapped process­es
  • Trib­al knowl­edge
  • Scat­tered data
  • Workarounds pre­tend­ing to be work­flows

Tools don’t cre­ate struc­ture.
Peo­ple do.

And when sys­tems don’t reflect how things should actu­al­ly work,
you don’t just lose effi­cien­cy —
you lose vis­i­bil­i­ty, own­er­ship, and the abil­i­ty to scale smart.

Because here’s the truth:
AI won’t save you.
And it can’t build the sys­tem with­out your process clar­i­ty.

The result?

The team stops guess­ing.

Work­flows are no longer passed around in DMs or buried in someone’s brain. Every­one knows where to find what they need — and what’s expect­ed of them. Sys­tems sup­port the work and the peo­ple. Hand­offs feel nat­ur­al. Pri­or­i­ties are shared. Trans­paren­cy increased.

Instead of chas­ing infor­ma­tion, your team starts recog­nis­ing pat­terns.
That’s when AI becomes use­ful — not noisy. Because the sys­tem under­neath is sol­id.

AI isn’t the sav­ior, it’s a mega­phone.

It’s not about work­ing hard­er. It’s about final­ly hav­ing an oper­a­tional back­bone that makes it pos­si­ble to grow, adapt, and evolve — togeth­er.

Becoming AI-Centric

The AI-Cen­tric Fly­wheel

Peo­ple

Peo­ple are the impulse-givers of your AI-Cen­tric Organ­i­sa­tion — they steer, spark, and shape how sys­tems evolve.

We begin by under­stand­ing how they work — then help them zoom out to see their own work­flows from a meta-per­spec­tive.

Process

We map how work real­ly hap­pens.

By sur­fac­ing hid­den work­flows and frag­ment­ed know-how, we cre­ate a shared process land­scape that’s struc­tured, scal­able, and automa­tion-ready.

Tools

With sol­id process­es in place, we choose tools that sup­port — not shape — the way your team works.

Then we design the right set­up and train your team to make it their own.

Peo­ple and AI 🪄

When peo­ple under­stand how they work — and why it mat­ters — they can use AI with pur­pose, not just prompts.

We sup­port teams in build­ing AI flu­en­cy and help them explore real use cas­es rel­e­vant to their role.

Process and AI 🪄

Once your process­es are mapped and acces­si­ble, we can iden­ti­fy automa­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties and intro­duce AI where it adds val­ue — with­out break­ing flow.

Tools and AI 🪄

We con­nect, auto­mate, and stream­line work­flows using your exist­ing tool­stack — while max­imis­ing Notion AI where it mat­ters most.

When your set­up is ready, we lay­er in automa­tion plat­forms like Make to pow­er AI-dri­ven actions across tools.

♻️ And then the loop starts again ♻️

Once the sys­tem is in place and teams start play­ing with AI, some­thing shifts.

New ways of work­ing emerge — ideas they couldn’t imag­ine before.

Because AI isn’t just anoth­er tool. It’s how we’ll rethink work.

Should You DIY or Hire a Strategic System Architect?

Let’s be hon­est: most teams don’t know what they need until they notice it’s miss­ing (this can take a long time).

They duct-tape a few tools togeth­er, guess their way through work­flows and tools, and call it a sys­tem.

But with­out clear think­ing, mapped process­es, and smart archi­tec­ture —
you’re just scal­ing con­fu­sion.

Here’s what you’re real­ly risk­ing by going it alone:

🚧 Blind Spots

Most teams aren’t trained to spot oper­a­tional gaps or depen­den­cies. What you miss ear­ly will cost you lat­er — in rework, down­time, or stalled AI ini­tia­tives.

🧩 Hidden Complexity

What seems “sim­ple” now quick­ly becomes tan­gled. With­out a prop­er sys­tem back­bone, you end up com­pen­sat­ing with human effort — again.

⌛ Time You Can’t Afford

DIY takes longer than expect­ed. Always. And every week spent fid­dling with tools is a week AI can’t help you, your ops stay patchy, and your team spins.

🧭 Misaligned Future

Sys­tems should do more than organ­ise work — they should set you up for scale.
The ques­tion isn’t “can we build this?” It’s “will this sys­tem serve us to become an AI-cen­tric organ­i­sa­tion?”

🧨 AI Will Scale the Mess — and the Consequences

Add AI on top of bro­ken sys­tems, and it won’t just under­per­form — it will con­fi­dent­ly pro­duce bad out­puts at scale. You’ll flood your team with inac­cu­rate data, con­fuse deci­sion-mak­ing, erode trust, and risk dam­ag­ing your rep­u­ta­tion. What looks like inno­va­tion becomes an oper­a­tional lia­bil­i­ty.

The better question

Can you afford to waste 3–6 months build­ing the wrong thing, only to start again?

How much is the
System Smart Build?

Pric­ing is based on com­plex­i­ty. Each phase runs for a vari­able num­ber of week­ly sprints — few­er for solo busi­ness­es, more for mul­ti-team organ­i­sa­tions.

ROI Phase

Build Phase

Refine Phase

The most impor­tant sprint and where every­thing starts.

Typ­i­cal­ly done between 2–4 weeks, depend­ing on how many teams and work­flows have to be includ­ed.

You’ll leave with a clear process map, a tai­lored ROI cal­cu­la­tion, and a sprint plan for your build.

Depend­ing on the com­plex­i­ty of the build, it’ll need more or few­er sprints.

Most clients see a work­ing pro­to­type in 2–3 weeks, then 1–3 weeks of test­ing and refine­ment before roll­out and team train­ing over 2–4 weeks.

The refine­ment sprints will be priced based on the com­plex­i­ty of your oper­a­tions, if it’ll include automa­tions and AI Agents.

Curious What Teams Like Yours Invest?

See what smart busi­ness­es spend to get oper­a­tions stream­lined, cen­tral­ize knowl­edge and build AI-ready sys­tems in Notion.

Quantify the cost of staying duct-taped

Before you think about AI, get real about your foun­da­tion.

This quick diag­nos­tic shows you exact­ly what your messy oper­a­tions are costing—in time, prof­it, and missed poten­tial for scal­able, AI-fueled growth.

Because if your sys­tems are frag­ment­ed, your data’s scat­tered, and your busi­ness runs on workarounds…

AI won’t help. It’ll only mag­ni­fy the mess.

Take 30 sec­onds to get a sharp, per­son­alised report that shows:
🔧 where you’re leak­ing effi­cien­cy
📉 how much it’s cost­ing you
🚀 and whether you’re struc­tural­ly ready to scale with AI.

It takes 30 seconds—and you’ll get a per­son­al­ized 5‑page report that puts your deci­sion into per­spec­tive.

Hey, I’m Natascha Buck

Founder of System 🧠 Smart

Fluent in English, German 🇩🇪, Swiss German🇨🇭, conversational in Spanish, can ask for a baguette in French 🥖 and know a few words in Arabic.

Notion Certified Consultant and Consulting Partner since 2021.

Polymath at heart 🩷

🧠 Growth Needs Clarity

Growth-mind­ed teams often find them­selves drown­ing.
Scat­tered data. Redun­dant tools. Messy process­es. Instead of accel­er­at­ing progress, their sys­tems clog it — drain­ing time, focus, and momen­tum.

I’ve spent 30+ years in the engine rooms of busi­ness.
From the Swiss Stock Exchange to pri­vate equi­ty and pub­lic sec­tor ops, I’ve learned how to diag­nose what’s bro­ken beneath the sur­face — and build sys­tems that actu­al­ly move the nee­dle.

I help teams escape fire­fight­ing mode.
The goal isn’t more hus­tle — it’s oper­a­tional clar­i­ty: clean process­es, empow­ered peo­ple, and lean, high-func­tion­ing sys­tems that evolve with your growth.

My core belief? 💦
Your sys­tems should sweat hard­er than your team — so growth stops being chaot­ic and starts becom­ing inevitable.

Not Your Typical Consultancy

Sys­tem Smart is small, spe­cial­ized, and senior-dri­ven.
You pay for the sharp knife — not the full cut­lery draw­er.

What you get isn’t a junior team Googling solu­tions mid-call.
It’s sea­soned judg­ment. The kind forged across three decades of build­ing sys­tems that actu­al­ly hold under pres­sure — in finance, gov­ern­ment orgs, small busi­ness­es, and scal­ing ser­vice teams.

This is a bou­tique agency. It’s a scalpel in a sea of but­ter knives.

Milestones That Shaped Me

Taught myself programming from a pre-internet handbook in my 20s and built my first system for an SME before I even knew what coding was.

Built a CRM system for fun in my late 20s, implemented it at the Swiss Stock Exchange, and rolled it out to teams in Zurich and Geneva.

Became the Swiss Stock Exchange’s first CRM Analyst, designing workflows and training teams in Zurich and London.

Developed an investor tracking system for a Private Equity firm—long before “RevOps” became a buzzword.

Ran my own startup—an artistic cake business—only to realize that I love building systems more than baking cakes (though my project management setup was as impressive as my 3D cakes).

Discovered Notion and fully embraced my identity as a process nerd, system architect, and efficiency optimizer.

Became Switzerland’s 1st Notion ambassador and 1st German-speaking Notion Certified Consultant (24th of 85+ worldwide).

Ready to Work Together?

If you’re ready to clear the chaos, build fric­tion­less sys­tems, and unlock oper­a­tional lever­age and scale with confidence—I’m here to make it hap­pen.