Why it costs more

Why your most capable person is doing it

The routine work drifts to whoever can be trusted with the exception.

Routine administrative work tends to land on the person best equipped to handle exceptions.

Not every business has this problem, and some should leave it alone.

Most of these can be done better. Whether it's worth doing is a separate question. What follows is one common form of the problem, described in general terms, because your version will differ. These are possible challenges, not a description of your business, and some should be left exactly as they are. If it sounds like your week, that's worth a conversation.

Watch: Your Best Person Is Doing Your Worst Work

Sound familiar?

The office manager processes the routine stack, then handles the exceptions.
The one person who would catch a billing error is busy typing.
Nobody has asked which part of the job they'd hand off tomorrow.
The task landed on them by drift, not by decision.

The idea in short

Nobody decides this. It drifts. The work only looks routine: most of it is mechanical, and then one in twenty needs somebody who knows that this customer bills differently, or that the job was split across two contracts. That one in twenty decides who ends up owning the whole stack. So it goes to the office manager, the bookkeeper, the senior estimator, and they spend most of their time on the nineteen that asked nothing of them.

What it costs

The wage difference is the small part. The real cost is what that person is not doing: catching the billing error, noticing a customer has not ordered in four months, chasing overdue accounts, because they know which customers respond to which approach. None of that is happening, and none of it shows up as a cost, because nobody misses work that was never attempted.

The part that is harder to say

It is often also the work that person likes least. Capable people absorb what needs doing and stay quiet about what they dread, because complaining about a task they have handled well for years feels unreasonable. The competence hides the problem. A useful question, because it will not be volunteered: what part of this job would you hand to somebody else tomorrow if you could? The answer is usually immediate.

What changes

None of this argues for fewer people. It argues that the most expensive capability in a small business, judgment about its own operation, is being spent on work that needs none. Moving the routine nineteen somewhere else puts that person back on the one in twenty, which is the only part that ever needed them.

Questions worth asking about your own operation

Who does your routine paperwork, and what else could they be doing?
What part of their job would they hand off first?
What has not been done in a year because nobody had time?

If this sounds familiar

Bring me the version you actually have. I'll learn how the process really works before I suggest anything. If it isn't worth changing, or isn't a fit for me, I'll say so. Talk through a problem