THE BIG PROBLEM.
By Kristin Skinner, Organizational Design and Systems Strategist
Every Thursday, THE BOARD brings you industry insights from our Members to your inbox.
In a world obsessed with outputs, I teach leaders how to master the inputs. Because how your teams work together is everything. Work smarter isn’t a slogan. It’s a system.
Every leader I talk to is drowning in “work about work”.
Meetings about meetings. Emails about emails. Slack threads about what was discussed in the all-hands that summarized last week's strategy deck.
Research shows we spend 60% of our time on work about work: coordinating, searching for information, switching between apps, and managing the chaos of collaboration itself.
That's less than half your team's time spent on actual value creation.
Everyone's busy. Few are productive.
The default response? "Work smarter, not harder."
But that phrase has become meaningless.
It's corporate wallpaper. A platitude on a poster. A thing leaders say when they don't know what else to say.
Because "working smarter" without systems is just another way to work harder.
THE REAL CULPRIT: INVISIBLE WORK.
Most organizations operate like cars with no dashboard.
The engine's running. You're moving forward. But you have no idea if you're about to overheat, run out of gas, or if that grinding sound means you're already doing damage.
The work that slows teams down is invisible. And most of it lives in the gaps between people:
DECISION BOTTLENECKS that no one names
CONTEXT SWITCHING that destroys deep work (studies show it takes 23 minutes to refocus after an interruption)
REWORK LOOPS from unclear requirements
INFORMATION SILOS where critical knowledge lives in one person's head
HANDOFF FAILURES when work moves between teams
PROCESS DEBT that accumulates like compound interest
These aren't individual productivity problems. They're collaboration problems.
How your teams work together is everything. And you can't fix what you can't see.
THE ILLUSION OF EFFICIENCY.
Most "efficiency" initiatives fail because they treat symptoms, not causes.
You implement a new project management tool. Productivity doesn't improve. You've just moved the chaos to a different platform.
You add more meetings to "align." Now everyone's aligned and has no time to execute.
You hire more people. Coordination costs explode. Things slow down.
This is what happens when you optimize parts instead of the whole.
It's like changing your oil when your transmission is failing. You're maintaining the wrong thing.
THE AI ILLUSION: MORE TOOLS, MORE CHAOS.
And now, AI is making it worse.
Not because AI doesn't work. But because of how companies are implementing it.
Every department is rushing to adopt AI. Marketing gets its own tools. Sales gets different ones. Ops picks another platform. Finance chooses something else.
The result? A tech stack that doesn't talk to itself.
AI tools that create incompatible outputs. Data that can't flow between systems. Teams that still need manual handoffs because the "smart" tools can't communicate.
Instead of reducing work about work, we've multiplied it.
Now you need bespoke integration projects. Custom workflows to bridge the gaps. People whose full-time job is translating between platforms.
You haven't eliminated friction. You've automated chaos.
Here's what most leaders miss: AI doesn't fix a people problem. It amplifies it.
If your teams don't have clear processes, AI will automate confusion faster.
If your departments work in silos, AI will make those silos more efficient—and more disconnected.
If your information architecture is a mess, AI will help you find the wrong answer more quickly.
Technology isn't the problem. Inputs are.
FROM SLOGAN TO SYSTEM: MASTERING THE INPUTS.
It's not just what you build. It's how your people work together to build it.
The brands and teams that actually work smarter—not just talk about it—have made three fundamental shifts:
1. MAKE THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE
You can't manage what you can't measure. But most teams measure outputs (tasks completed) instead of outcomes (value delivered).
And almost no one measures the inputs—the way teams actually work together.
What to track instead:
TIME TO DECIDE: How long from question to answer?
REWORK RATE: How often do deliverables come back for revision?
CONTEXT SWITCHING FREQUENCY: How many different projects touch a person per week?
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL TIME: How long to find what you need?
CROSS-FUNCTIONAL HANDOFF DELAYS: Where does work get stuck between teams?
One executive team I work with discovered they spent 40% of meeting time re-explaining decisions that were already made. They didn't have a meeting problem. They had a knowledge management problem.
Once you see it, you can fix it.
2. FIX AT THE ROOT, NOT THE SYMPTOM
Surface problem: "Our team is always behind schedule."
Root cause: Unclear scope at project kickoff leads to scope creep, which leads to missed deadlines, which leads to rushed work, which leads to rework.
The fix isn't "work faster." It's "define scope better."
Surface problem: "We can't scale—we need more people."
Root cause: Critical processes live in one person's head. Knowledge isn't documented. Onboarding takes 6 months.
The fix isn't "hire more." It's "systematize knowledge."
Most leaders jump to solutions before they understand the actual problem. That's not efficiency. That's expensive guesswork.
3. MOVE LIKE A PIT CREW, SCALE LIKE A MACHINE
Watch a Formula 1 pit crew. Four tires changed in 2.5 seconds. Twenty people. Zero wasted motion.
That's not just speed. That's synchronization.
Every person knows their exact role. The sequence is choreographed. The handoffs are seamless. The timing is precise.
That's what high-performing teams look like. Not people working faster, but people working in effective coordination.
And here's what makes it possible: the system behind it.
The hundreds of practice runs. The documented procedures. The clear accountability. The instant feedback loops.
A system isn't a tool. It's not software. It's not a process document.
A system is a repeatable way of working that:
Reduces cognitive load
Eliminates redundant decisions
Captures institutional knowledge
Gets better with use
Runs whether you're in the room or not
Think of it like this: A pit crew can't improvise at 200mph. Neither can your team at scale.
You need a machine that works the same way every time so people can focus on the strategic decisions that actually require human judgment.
The best operators build systems that scale without adding headcount. That's how you move from startup chaos to enterprise precision without losing speed.
THE ANATOMY OF A WORKING SYSTEM.
Here's what actually works:
DECISION RIGHTS: Who decides what? When? With what input? Most delays come from unclear authority, not slow people.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE: Where does knowledge live? How is it updated? Can someone new find what they need in under 5 minutes?
FEEDBACK LOOPS: How do you know if something's working? Weekly metrics reviews beat quarterly retrospectives every time.
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES: Not for bureaucracy, for freedom. Document the routine so people can focus on the strategy.
FORCING FUNCTIONS: Automated reminders, required fields, built-in checkpoints. Systems that prevent problems instead of fixing them after.
A global retailer's launches were on the calendar, but 30% shipped late or incomplete with stores missing training, digital lacking final assets, and marketing pushed by weeks. Root cause? The calendar tracked completion dates but not cross-functional readiness dependencies. Solution? A launch readiness dashboard with mandatory sign-offs at three gates and assigned owners. Each function had to attach specific deliverables to mark complete, with automatic escalation for gaps. On-time launches with full support jumped in just one quarter. That's a system.
THE HIDDEN COST OF NOT SYSTEMIZING.
Here's what leaders don't see until it's too late:
Burnout of high performers: Your best people are buried in questions only they can answer. They become bottlenecks. Then they leave.
Let's do the math on what that actually costs:
Say you lose a senior director making US $180K.
Replacement cost: 1.5-2x salary = $270K-$360K
Lost productivity during vacancy: 3-6 months = $45K-$90K in salary equivalent
Onboarding and training: 6-12 months to full productivity = another $90K-$180K in reduced output
Institutional knowledge loss: incalculable, but conservatively $50K in rehashed decisions and repeated mistakes
TOTAL COST OF ONE BURNED-OUT HIGH PERFORMER: $455K-$680K.
Now multiply that by 3-5 people per year at a mid-sized company.
You're looking at $1.4M-$3.4M annually in turnover costs alone.
All because you didn't systemize the work they were carrying in their heads.
INABILITY TO SCALE: You can't hire fast enough because training new people is chaos. Critical expertise remains locked in individual heads instead of captured in systems.
STRATEGIC DRIFT: Everyone's so busy executing, no one steps back to ask "are we building the right things?"
INNOVATION TAX: There's no time to experiment, pilot, or think. You're stuck maintaining the machine.
These aren't inevitable. They're the predictable result of operating without systems.
WHAT TO DO NEXT
If you're serious about working smarter, here's where to start:
Map your invisible work. Pick one recurring pain point. Track it for two weeks. Count the cost in time and rework. Make it visible.
Ask better questions. Stop asking "how do we do this faster?" Start asking "why are we doing it this way at all?"
Document your decisions. Not everything. But the ones that keep coming up. Build a searchable record so you're not relitigating the same ground.
Assign an owner to systems improvement. It can't be everyone's job and no one's job. Someone needs to be responsible for making the engine run better.
Test, measure, iterate. Systems aren't built perfectly. They're built iteratively. Small improvements compound.
THE BOTTOM LINE
"Work smarter, not harder" isn't a platitude. It's a practice. It starts with mastering the inputs, not obsessing over outputs.
IT'S NOT JUST WHAT YOU BUILD. IT'S HOW YOUR PEOPLE WORK TOGETHER TO BUILD IT.
Because you can have the best strategy, the best product, the best talent in the world.
But if your teams can't move like a pit crew—synchronized, seamless, systematic—you'll never scale like a machine.
The work requires what most organizations avoid: slowing down to speed up.
Taking time to document. To standardize. To systematize. To make visible what's invisible.
It's unglamorous work. But it's the difference between companies that scale and companies that stall.
You can keep running on instinct, organizational knowledge locked in key people's heads, and sheer hustle.
Or you can start building the system today.
Pick one invisible problem. Make it visible. Fix it at the root.
That's how machines get built, one component at a time.
Need help building systems that scale? Ready to move from chaos to choreography? Let's talk.
THE BOARD sits uniquely at the intersection of Brand, Business, and Culture. 1:1 advisory, project-based experts, fractional leadership, and curated DREAM TEAMS help you move faster, smarter, and with far less risk. Let’s talk!
Fractional talent is the future, and THE BOARD is where it lives info@theboard.community
