"I know we're busy. I'm just not convinced
we need another person."
Before you hire one, let's look at the work.
I help B2B service businesses find hidden capacity & make better use of the team they already have.
Before you add another person, find out what's eating the capacity you have
When everyone is busy and there’s more work to do, hiring makes perfect sense. Sometimes it’s exactly what you should do.
But busy people can also be a symptom of how the work works.
Inside a busy team, I’m looking for work that:
❌ Shouldn't exist.
The business outgrew it. The task did not get the memo.
❌ Takes too much work.
Too many steps, handoffs, approvals, workarounds or do-overs.
❌ Is sitting with the wrong person.
Especially expensive people doing work that doesn’t need their expertise.
❌ Is harder because the knowledge is hard to get to.
So people search, ask, recreate and reinvent.
❌ Is still manual because nobody has revisited it.
The process made sense once. Possibly during the Obama administration.
❌ Could now be done differently.
AI and automation have created options that didn’t exist a few years ago.
✅ Really does need another person.
In which case: excellent. Now we know.
The goal isn't to avoid hiring. It's to stop using hiring as the only way to create capacity.
There are more ways to get the work done now
AI can do some of the work. It can help a person do the work. Automation can handle routine steps and handoffs. Or the work can be split differently between a person and technology.
Some work should still stay entirely human. The difference is that we have more choices now.
I don’t start with “Where can we use AI?”
I start with “What’s the best way to get this work done now?”
And then: what do we do with the time we get back?
Finding ten hours a week is nice.
Finding ten hours and knowing exactly where you want them to go is operating leverage.
More room for growth.
Take on more work without adding headcount at the same rate.
Better use of expensive people.
Give senior people back the work you actually need senior people to do.
Room for the work that never gets done.
The strategic work everyone agrees matters right before the urgent stuff eats Tuesday.
Better margins.
Get more value from the payroll you already carry.
Fewer reflex hires.
Hire when you have a real human-capacity gap, not because the current workflow ran out of road.
Better client experience.
Put capacity into responsiveness, quality and the places clients actually notice.
Saving 10 hours isn't ROI. What you do with the 10 hours is!
I was doing this work before AI showed up
For years, my work as a fractional COO has meant walking into service businesses and figuring out why the work is harder than it should be: who owns what, where things get stuck, whether the right person is doing the right work, what keeps getting handed back, and what the business actually needs next.
AI didn’t change that job. It changed the available answers.
I can now look at a workflow and ask not onlyWho should own this? or How should this process work? but How much of this needs a human at all?
That’s a much more useful question than “How should we use AI?”
I’m an operator with a bigger toolkit. Not an AI consultant looking for somewhere to use it.
What it Looks Like in Practice
KN Literary Arts
KN Literary Arts had ambitious growth goals but wasn’t seeing traction. Internally, the team didn’t have consensus on what the real problem was, and the work kept landing back on Kelly’s desk.
What changed:
- Quarterly planning and a meeting cadence the team could maintain
- Clear priorities + a short list of metrics that mattered
- Re-scoped leadership roles and the right people in the right seats
- Growth goals finally started moving again
“Karen made such a difference from the day she walked in. We had ambitious goals but no traction — and no agreement on why. She got us aligned, rebuilt our rhythm, and helped me put the right leadership team in place. Now the business is firing on all cylinders, and I feel invigorated by our vision again.”
— Kelly Notaras, Founder & CEO, KN Literary Arts
Where should we start?
Start with the size of the question you need to answer. Maybe it’s one proposed hire. Maybe you want to know where capacity is hiding across the business. Or maybe we already know what needs to change and it’s time to fix it.
ONE DECISION →
Before You Hire
You’re considering another person but aren’t convinced that’s the answer.
One proposed hire. One 90-minute working session. One clear recommendation.
ACROSS THE BUSINESS →
Hidden Capacity
Your team is stretched and you want to know where capacity is being lost — and which opportunities are actually worth fixing.
A business-wide diagnostic. Your top three leverage plays. A prioritized roadmap.
FIX WHAT WE FIND →
Work, Redesigned
We already know where the opportunity is. Now we change the way the work gets done and measure whether it worked.
Process, roles, knowledge, systems, AI or automation — whatever the work actually calls for.
Messy is fine. A moving target is harder. This work is best for B2B service businesses with a real team and work that repeats often enough to improve. You don’t need pristine SOPs, perfect systems or an org chart suitable for framing. But, you do need to be willing to let a better way of working become the way you actually work.
Before you add another person, let’s look at the work.
Better use of the team you already have.
I help B2B service businesses find hidden capacity and make better use of the team they already have. We look at the work first — then decide what needs a person, what doesn’t, and what’s worth changing.
My Substack: Human in the Loop
AI has given businesses a lot more options for getting work done. That doesn’t mean the answer is to automate everything.
I write about capacity, operations, AI, and the increasingly interesting question: What work actually deserves a person?
© 2026 KAREN SERGEANT • ALL RIGHTS RESERVED