Are your internal systems supporting growth or creating bottlenecks?

Write down the decisions you made last week: prices, schedule changes, credits, purchases. For each one, ask whether someone else could have made it if they'd had the number. The ones that waited only because nobody else had the number are handoffs to fix.

Look back over the last month for emails that went unanswered, customer requests that were missed, and internal tasks that were forgotten. Count them and note what each one cost.

List the processes that depend on one person. Write down what happens when that person is sick, on vacation or gone. Estimate the disruption.

For one week, track how your salespeople and production leads spend their time. Work out the share that goes to admin instead of selling or building.

Test it. Try to find a key document, a customer's file, a vendor's contact and a written procedure. Time each one and count how many people you had to ask.

Pick three routine processes (order entry, vendor management, customer onboarding) and write down the steps each person follows. Note the differences, the missed steps and the workarounds.

Ask your team for their three most time-consuming or frustrating admin tasks. Look for the ones that come up more than once, and add up the time they cost.