Whack-a-Mole Is Not a Business Strategy

If you went to a conference with your peers and stood at the bar afterward, what would you complain about? That one answer tells you more about what your business needs than almost anything else.

Jen Hamilton was a guest on the Mastery Fractional CFO's "Punchy" Podcast with host Ryan Chenier, and the conversation went straight at the question every growing business eventually has to answer: why does everything still land on your desk, and what do you actually do about it?

Your Team Doesn't Have a Skill Issue. It Has a Clarity Issue.

Most founders assume the constant fires mean their team can't handle more. Almost never true.

The things that I often see are really more team-related issues. So I often see that the people aren't being accountable. They're not doing what they say they're gonna do, or they're not taking initiative. - Jen Hamilton

That is not a hiring problem. It is a clarity problem. 

People need to know what their role is, how they will be measured, and what decisions are actually theirs to make. Without that, every decision quietly flows back up to you, one small escalation at a time, until you are the only one steering.

The Whack-a-Mole Test

Here's a simple way to tell whether this is happening in your business. Listen to what you complain about.

If the same problems keep popping up, that's when we're starting to say, okay, what we're missing is an operational business acumen, business professional who knows how to run a business. - Jen Hamilton

If you are solving the same fire for the third or fourth time this quarter, that is not a fluke. That is a system with no owner. Ask yourself: what is the complaint you keep repeating to the same three people, and has anyone ever actually fixed the root of it? 

Right Seat, Right Oar

Once the accountability gaps get named, the fix is usually simpler than owners expect. It starts with making sure everyone actually knows their role.

Get everyone really rowing in the right direction and in the right seat with the right oar. - Jen Hamilton

One quick gut check: if you tried to sketch your org chart or accountability chart on a napkin right now, could you? 

If you can't put it in a quick visual, chances are your team can't either, and that's exactly where people start stepping on each other's toes and bottlenecking decisions that were never supposed to reach you. 

How to Know It's Time

So when is it actually time to bring in real operational help? A few signs are hard to miss once you know to look for them: 

• feeling like you have to answer every question personally, 
• believing no one else can do it right, and 
• complaining about the same team issues over and over without anything actually changing.

None of that means you failed. It means the business has outgrown the structure that got it here, and structure is not something that appears on its own.

Let's Make This Personal

You didn't take on every decision because you wanted to. You took it on because no one else had the clarity, the role, or the permission to carry it instead.

That is fixable, and it usually takes far less time than owners and leaders expect once someone helps name the root cause instead of just treating the symptom.

Next Steps

This week, do the napkin test. Try to sketch your org chart or accountability chart from memory. If you can't, that's your starting point, not a failure.

And pay attention to what you complain about. If the same problem has come up three times this quarter, that's not bad luck. That's a system missing an owner.

If you want help figuring out whether a Fractional COO is the right next move to build your systems with owners, book a free Education Call with Hamilton COOs.  We'll help you find out or point you in the right direction, even if it isn’t us.