I have left companies where I loved the people I worked with and stayed friends with them for years. I have worked with managers trying to fix systems they did not create and employees who went far outside their job descriptions to help because the official process had failed. Criticizing the system does not erase what those people contributed.
Their efforts also help explain why broken processes can survive for so long. Someone knows who to call, maintains the spreadsheet nobody officially owns, remembers the exception, or warns the new employee about the missing step. From the outside, the organization appears to function because that invisible labor keeps it moving.
Eventually, those people can burn out, leave, or stop compensating. Everyone wonders why the process suddenly broke, even though it depended on personal effort all along. It did not suddenly break; someone stopped carrying it. Ask those people what they are compensating for, then give the missing steps proper ownership. Their knowledge should help improve the process before the business loses it.
This post is part of my 25 lessons from 25 years in consulting series, exploring what it takes to build a consulting firm that delivers for clients and supports the people doing the work.
From leadership and employee experience to sales and delivery, the series comes back to one idea: a consulting company should be its own best client.
Have a lesson of your own? Share what has worked, what hasn’t, or what you wish more consulting firms understood in the comments.