A runbook for a manual fix is a declaration of temporary failure.

It is a promise to do the right thing later, such as automating the fix or removing its cause, but not now. Right now, we're going to write down the steps and hope someone follows them at 3 a.m.

How often do we go back and do the right thing?

Rarely.

How many of these promises do we break?

A lot of them.

An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.

If you have runbooks, consider them as backlog tasks. Try not to add to their numbers. Failure begets runbooks; runbooks beget runbooks; and runbooks beget failure.