Think About This Before You Hire Again.
- Matt Symes
- May 8, 2025
- 2 min read
I’m writing this from a tiny riverside town in New Brunswick.
The frogs and crickets are deafening. It’s beautiful. But behind me - inside that office - I’ve been in a war room with a multinational executive team trying to unbreak a broken system.
Their business looks impressive from the outside.But inside? People are burning out. Roles are unclear. Strategic hires are failing.
And here’s the hard truth:
The system is always running… even if you never built one.
Which means if your people are struggling, it might not be their fault.It might be the invisible operating system they’re trapped inside.
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The Silent Killer of Growth
You can survive misalignment for a while.You can carry it with sheer will, work ethic, and fire drills.
But eventually it catches up.
You start solving for urgency instead of design.
You hire reactively, hoping the next person is “the one.”
You assume problems are about people… instead of the processes they’re forced to navigate.
Most service businesses I work with have never formally mapped how work flows through their organization.
But every single one of them has a system.It’s just happening by accident - not design.
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What Happens When You Don’t Name the System
Let me show you what I mean.
In a typical service business, here’s a basic delivery lifecycle:
Outreach → Intake → Scheduling → Service Delivery → Admin → Follow-up → Repeat
Looks simple. But in practice?
Work gets stuck between intake and execution.
The founder is approving invoices, rewriting emails, and running point on everything.
No one owns follow-up. Everyone assumes someone else will handle it.
Sound familiar?
It’s not a headcount problem.It’s a clarity problem.
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3 Questions to Audit Your Operating System
Here’s how to find out if your system is breaking you (and your team):
Who actually owns each step?
Not who should. Who does - today.
How long does each step take, weekly?
You can’t fix what you won’t measure.
Are your people working at the top of their skillset?
Or are they plugging gaps out of necessity?
If you don’t like the answers, don’t throw bodies at the problem. Redesign the system.
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Change Is Hard. But Stagnation Is Worse.
Back in that boardroom, the stakes were high.They’ve got hundreds of employees and a fractured HR system threatening the whole machine.
But scale doesn’t make structure easier.It makes misalignment more expensive.
And whether you’re running a national brand or a $1M boutique firm, the same truth applies:
If your operating system is weak, no hire can save you. If it’s strong, your team can finally thrive.
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