Why Your Team Is Busy - but Work Still Isn’t Moving

This newsletter was originally called “The 4 things I tried to avoid talking about at Thanksgiving” but I decided that was a bit too spicy to live in your Inbox forever lollll…. so instead:

Ever walked into your office and thought, “We are so busy - but why does work never seem to move?”

I once knew a business where there was literally $50,000 of work sitting on the floor in the shape of client files that this team wasn’t able to get to because they were “so busy”.

And I get it - sometimes you get so caught up in deadlines, client questions, team problems - the last thing you want to do is step back and admit that something’s not really working.

But here’s the pink-and-purple elephant in the room: if work keeps piling up, it’s not really a 'busy season' problem, it’s a systems problem.

Because when files drag on forever or you have a 6-month waitlist, typically one or two things need to be looked at: 

• Price

• Systems / processes

Price is the easiest dial to turn.  Think back to your Econ 110 class and that lovely supply / demand chart.  It’s saying to you that demand > supply which means you could probably charge more. 

But adjusting price is not always the answer to fixing a bottleneck - especially when you raise your rates, but don’t fix your systems.  You’ll still be drowning, but you’ll just be slightly better paid.

So before you start adjusting fees or think about adding another team member, ask yourself - where is work actually getting stuck?  

It’s not that anyone’s lazy or bad at their job - far from it.  

It’s that no one truly owns the process.  

The hand-offs between the advisor, associate, and admin are fuzzy. 

Everyone’s waiting for someone else to spearhead the file and eventually say “this file has been open for 90 days - what’s the plan to get it across the finish line??” 

And also, perhaps your back office systems were designed when we still had physical fax machines lol.

But the thing is - nobody sets out to let this happen.

You start with clean workflows, CRM reminders, and a nice client-experience flowchart on the wall… and then over time, things just pile up.

An advisor tweaks a step here. An assistant adds a new spreadsheet there. Suddenly you’ve got six places to update one client address before sending out an invoice and no one knows which version is right.

Because it’s easier to keep sprinting - responding to client emails, chasing signatures, updating plans - than it is to stop, step back, and rebuild the track you’re running on.

That’s where we come in - not with judgment or criticism - but with a fresh set of eyes to help you see where things are getting stuck, document how the work actually moves through your office, and rebuild the process so it finally supports you.

So instead of saying “We’re swamped,” you get to say:

“Our turnaround time is 35 days - not 75.”

That means more revenue, sooner because every extra week a file sits unfinished, it’s literally money sitting on your office floor instead of ready for use in your bank account.

So, if you want Q4 to end with less work on the floor and higher billings, let’s chat, friend.  Book a call and let’s get started.