Org design

By Jean Gallagher McCauley · July 2026

I've noticed a pattern in how companies solve problems. Something breaks, and the answer is always the same: hire someone or buy a tool.

Almost nobody stops to ask what's actually going wrong underneath. So the team gets bigger, the tool list gets longer, and the problem is still there. Six months later it has a bigger budget attached to it.

I understand the instinct. Buying is more exciting than digging. Adding always feels like progress. A new hire or a new platform gives everyone something to point to. Digging into why work keeps falling apart is unglamorous, and it sometimes surfaces answers people don't want, like a process that only exists in one person's head, or two teams who each think the other owns the handoff.

But here's what surprised me when I started digging into the problem first: most of the time, the team and tools you already have can fix it.

Where I learned this the hard way

At LEEO I led a restructuring that took us from 125 people across five countries to 35, and cut burn by 66%. When you run an org that lean, you lose the option of solving problems with headcount. Every "we need to hire for this" becomes a forcing function: do we actually, or is something else broken?

The honest answer, more often than I expected, was something else. A workflow nobody owned. A tool we already paid for that could do the job, sitting half-configured. A meeting that should have been a decision.

What digging looks like

Start with ownership. Get clear on who owns what so work stops slipping through the cracks. Most "capacity problems" are actually ownership problems. When two people each assume the other has it, the work doesn't happen, and the symptom looks exactly like being understaffed.

Then audit your tools. Look at what your current stack can actually do. Most companies are paying for the same feature two or three times and don't know it. Your ATS, your HRIS, and your project tool probably all have overlapping automation nobody turned on. Before you buy platform number twelve, spend an afternoon in the admin settings of the eleven you have.

Fix the process before you fund the position. If a workflow is broken, a new hire inherits the broken workflow. You've added salary to the problem without removing the problem. Write down how the work should move first. Sometimes that document eliminates the role. Sometimes it sharpens it into a role worth hiring for.

Hiring still happens. It just happens last.

None of this is anti-hiring. I've spent a decade building teams, and the right hire at the right moment changes a company's trajectory. The point is sequencing. When you've mapped ownership, squeezed your existing tools, and fixed the process, the hires you do make land in a system that's ready for them. They ramp faster and they stay longer, because they were hired into clarity instead of chaos.

It's amazing how lean a team can stay when hiring is the last resort instead of the first instinct.

Nothing feels better than a tight team and burn you're actually in control of.