Questions we answerProcess and ownership
Should I fix the process before hiring?
Usually yes, at least far enough to know what the new person would own. It is cheap and quick, and it either removes the need or tells you exactly what to recruit for. It stops being sensible once it becomes a reason never to decide.
Free · a few minutes · starts from “Something in the team isn't working”
The short answer
Usually yes, and it is rarely a long delay. If the process is undocumented, unowned or visibly wasteful, a new person inherits all of that plus the time it takes to learn it. Writing down how the work flows and naming an owner costs a week or two and often changes what you would hire for. Fix it first unless the work is already well understood and owned and there is simply more of it than the hours allow — in which case the process is not the problem.
This is not a stalling tactic and it is not an argument against hiring. It is sequencing. A week spent writing down how the work actually flows costs almost nothing, and it changes the job description you end up writing.
There is a limit to it. If the process is sound and there is simply more work than people, redesigning it again is avoidance. The point is to find out which of those you have — not to keep looking for reasons not to hire.
Is it really this?
Worth checking before you spend anything. These are the signals that tend to tell the two apart.
Signs it is
- You could not write the job description today without inventing what the role owns.
- The same work takes a different route depending on who picks it up.
- A noticeable share of the week is rework, chasing, or moving information between systems.
- The last person who joined took a long time to become useful, because there was nothing to learn from.
Signs it's something else
- The process is written down, followed, and still does not fit the hours available.
- The gap is a skill nobody has, which no amount of redesign will create.
- Something is at risk now — a customer, a deadline, a regulatory date — and a redesign will not arrive in time.
- You have already simplified it twice and the load has not moved.
What's usually behind it
- A flow that grew by accretion, where every step made sense at the moment it was added.
- Hand-offs nobody designed, producing delay that looks like understaffing.
- A role that would be hard to describe, because the work it would own has never been defined.
- Genuine volume growth, where the process is fine and the arithmetic is not.
What people usually get wrong
- Treating process work as a project rather than a week, so it never finishes and the hire never happens.
- Fixing the flow without deciding who owns the work, which leaves the main problem in place.
- Hiring first and promising to fix the flow afterwards, which rarely survives the first month.
- Redesigning around whoever happens to be available, so the design expires when they move.
The options, and when each one fits
In no particular order. Which of these fits depends on your situation, not on the question you typed.
Write down how the work flows, then decide
You cannot yet describe what the new person would own.
Name an owner, then recruit
The work is clear but accountability for the outcome is not.
Do both at once
The need is urgent and somebody other than the hiring manager can do the process work.
Recruit now
The process is sound, documented and followed, and the constraint is genuinely hours.
When doing nothing is the right call
If the pressure is real but nothing is breaking, a month of watching before you change anything is defensible — provided it is a decision with a date rather than a habit. Write down what you are watching for, and what you will do the moment you see it.
What the diagnostic asks
- What a new person would mainly add, and who owns the work today.
- How repeatable the work is and how much of it is written down.
- How long this has been the case, whether it is growing, and how soon it needs sorting.
“I don't know” is always an answer. Nothing is assumed on your behalf.
The routes it weighs
Every diagnostic weighs all ten routes. These are the ones that tend to matter for this question — a description of the rules, not a promise about your answer.
Process improvement
Change how the work flows — remove steps, name an owner, fix the hand-offs.
Recruit
Recruit a new person for a durable, sizeable need that is central to the team.
Redistribute
Move ownership of the work to where it fits, and make that explicit.
AI Assist
Keep a person in charge and give them AI for drafting, summarising, checking or analysis.
Do nothing yet
Record the issue, set a revisit date, and decide what would change your mind.
What changes the answer
- A process that lives in people's heads is the first thing to fix whatever follows, because a new person cannot learn it.
- A documented, followed process with a genuine volume problem points at recruiting without delay.
- An urgent risk with a date on it changes the sequencing rather than the eventual answer.
Get your own read
A handful of short questions, then the strongest route for your situation, what's also credible, what we still don't know and what would change our view. No account, no setup.
Related questions
- Is this a process problem or a people problem?More often process than managers expect. If your most capable person would struggle in the same seat, the work is badly shaped. If one person struggles where others do not, the answer is about that person.
- Do I need a new hire or a better process?Usually the process first, because it is cheap to try and tells you how much of the load is design rather than volume. Sometimes both.
- My team is overloaded. What should I do?Start by finding out whether the overload is volume, design or ownership. Each has a different fix, and only one of them is more people.
- Nobody owns this work. What do I do?Give it an owner. That is almost always the first move, and it is faster and cheaper than anything else on the list.
- How do I fix handoff problems?Work fails at the joins more often than in anyone's hands. Fixing it means agreeing what "ready" means at each boundary — and having someone own the outcome across it.
- Projects keep slipping — what should I do?Repeated slippage is information. What matters is where it slips: consistently in the same place is a process problem, everywhere at once is usually over-commitment.