When someone leaves, ask whether the job should exist

In six weeks, three people left the same team in one of my businesses. An operations manager, a project manager and the person who ran our orders.

A few years ago that would have terrified me. This time I asked a different question.

If we were building this business today, would we create these roles at all?

Take ordering

For years, someone took information out of our system, worked out what needed ordering, placed it with suppliers, checked the confirmations, chased what was missing, then told everyone else what was happening.

Break it down and a huge part of that job was a person moving data from one place to another. So we rebuilt it:

• Orders are generated from the original customer job.
• Supplier confirmations are checked automatically, line by line.
• Invoices are reviewed and pushed through to Xero.
• Anything that doesn’t match gets flagged.

A person deals with the exceptions, not every transaction.

This isn’t about needing fewer people

It’s about people spending less time on the parts of the job nobody ever enjoyed — retyping, chasing, checking, answering the same question again — and more time on the work that actually needs a human. Relationships. Unusual problems. Judgement calls.

The business you’d build today shouldn’t look like the one you built ten years ago. Yet when someone leaves, the same job usually goes straight back out. Same responsibilities, same process, same salary.

So the next time someone hands in their notice, don’t reach for the job advert first. Ask whether the job should exist in that shape.

Redesigning roles and processes like this is a big part of what I do. If you’d like help, apply to work with me.