Before You Hire, Count The Handoffs
“We need another person.”
It sounds like a reasonable response when work is backing up, employees are stretched, and customers are waiting. Sometimes it is exactly the right response.
But before approving the position, I would ask a different question: Is the work taking too long because there aren't enough people doing it, or because too many people have to touch it before anything gets done?
Those are different problems. Hiring can solve the first. It can make the second worse.
More People Does Not Automatically Mean More Capacity
An article in my recent reading collection described a growing business that hired someone to identify problems and report them to the people who could fix them. The intention was to increase capacity. Instead, the new role introduced another point where work had to wait. The issue was not the employee. It was how the position had been designed.
That distinction matters.
A hiring request can describe a full day of activity without explaining what will actually move faster, improve, or get resolved because the position exists.
Collect updates. Track requests. Follow up with departments. Prepare reports. Schedule discussions.
Those activities can serve a legitimate purpose. But before putting a salary behind them, leaders should ask why so much effort is required to keep the work moving.
Are we adding capability, or assigning someone to compensate for a process we haven't fixed?
Follow the Request, Not the Organizational Chart
Consider a hypothetical customer request.
One person receives it. Another checks the details. A supervisor approves it. A different department determines whether it can be fulfilled. Someone sends a clarification back to the original employee. The customer answers. The request starts moving again.
Everyone may be doing what their role requires. The customer is still waiting.
Now imagine adding a coordinator to monitor that request. The coordinator can provide visibility, identify delays, and help resolve them. That may be valuable.
But if the coordinator cannot address the reason the request keeps stopping, the organization has added someone to manage the waiting rather than reduce it.
This is why I would look at the path of the work before looking at the vacancy on the organizational chart.
Where does the request stop? What is it waiting for? Who can make the next decision? Does that person have the information and authority to act?
“We're short-staffed” may be the answer. It should not be the starting assumption.
A Handoff Is Not Necessarily a Problem
The goal is not to eliminate every handoff.
Specialized work requires specialized knowledge. Independent review can protect quality. Safety, compliance, and financial controls should not disappear because someone wants a shorter process.
The useful question is what each handoff contributes.
Does it add expertise? Catch an error? Protect against a meaningful risk? Put the work in the hands of someone who can move it forward?
Or does it exist because information is scattered, expectations are unclear, or nobody is comfortable making a decision without another approval?
Counting handoffs is only the beginning. Understanding why they exist is the real work.
Removing a necessary review is not efficiency. Keeping an unnecessary approval is not accountability.
Who Owns the Work Between Departments?
Here is the question I would put in front of a leadership team: Who owns the outcome when the work crosses departmental lines?
Not who owns each step. Who is responsible for making sure the whole thing works?
A department can complete its portion and pass the request along. From that department's perspective, the assignment is finished. From the customer's perspective, nothing has happened yet.
If every department is accountable only for its own piece, leaders need to examine who has the authority to address the gaps between those pieces.
Otherwise, the proposed hire may become the person who chases everyone else.
That can provide immediate relief. It can also create a new dependency. The process works because one person knows whom to call, which approval can be expedited, and how to get around the places where work gets stuck.
What happens when that person is absent, promoted, or leaves?
If the answer is that everything slows down again, the organization has not resolved the problem. It has placed the problem in someone's job description.
Before You Approve the Position
My recommendation is simple: take one recent piece of delayed work and trace it from beginning to end.
Use an actual request, not the process everyone says they follow.
Identify where work was performed, where it waited, and where it had to go backward. Ask the people involved what prevented the next step.
Then examine the proposed position against what you found:
What specific constraint will this hire remove?
Will the person have the authority to resolve it, or only report it?
Could clearer information, decision boundaries, or ownership remove the delay instead?
What result should improve after the position is filled?
If the work is clearly defined, decisions can be made, and demand still exceeds available capacity, hire. People should not be expected to absorb a genuine staffing shortage indefinitely.
But if work is stalled because nobody knows who can approve it, adding another employee does not answer that question.
Hire for the Gap You Actually Have
I am not arguing for fewer people. I am arguing for a better diagnosis before asking more people to carry the same unresolved problem.
A well-designed position can strengthen judgment, coordination, service, and organizational capacity. A poorly designed one can add another inbox the work must pass through.
Before adding another person to move the work along, make sure you are not adding another person the work must move through.
If you are not sure whether your next hire will add capacity or another handoff, let's talk. The answer starts with understanding where the work stops and why.
Until next week...
Dr. Neal McIntyre, DPA
Dr. Neal McIntyre is the author of Leadership Is Dead: Why Traditional Leadership Is Failing - And What Must Replace It. He works with executives and boards to turn leadership from a concentration risk into a structural advantage. Through his PRISM™ Leadership Continuity Framework, his clients build organizations where leadership transfers, holds, and compounds so that the next transition strengthens the enterprise instead of destabilizing it.
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