When leaders blame tools and tactics instead of examining whether their own people are holding growth back
In a candid take on organizational blind spots, Mollie Gaby, Principal at CG Infinity, highlights a hard truth many leaders avoid: sometimes your biggest pain point isn't your technology or your strategy — it's your staff. A common red flag is resistance to change. When team members are unwilling to explore new tools, automate manual tasks, or rethink outdated processes, efficiency stalls. Even worse, micromanagement at the leadership level can compound the problem, with managers redoing work themselves or failing to trust their teams, creating bottlenecks instead of momentum.
Sometimes your biggest pain point isn't your technology or your strategy — it's your staff.
Gaby explains that meaningful improvement requires openness on both sides. Consultants can identify opportunities across front, mid, and back-office operations, but progress only happens when leadership and staff actively participate. Setting aside time to walk through processes, discuss challenges, and evaluate improvements is essential. Without buy-in and collaboration, even the best recommendations fall flat. Real transformation starts with honest evaluation — and the willingness to change.
Real transformation starts with honest evaluation — and the willingness to change.
Video TranscriptExpand ↓
What we see sometimes in working with customers is that the staff may be your pain point when they are clearly not open to exploring new options. At CG, I believe we are a little different than other consultants because we're not just technical consultants. We're not just project managers. We bring a service that helps customers just evaluate their current process, whether that be in front, mid or back office. And we can identify these are the areas where there needs to be automation or, you know, improvement needs to be made. The difference in our consultants are also because many of us bring experience that allows us to identify those issues because we led those departments, we did that job, and then we can learn from our mistakes, learn from what we did well, and we can share that with our customers. As far as identifying if your staff is one of your pain points, a big problem that seems to occur with staff is that they are not open to exploring new options that can improve their efficiencies. They can automate manual work, or they can reduce manual work. Maybe there's steps that don't need to be taken. And that's always a challenge when you don't have everyone on board. Then other things we see are maybe management is micromanaging a little too much, or they're performing tasks themselves that could be done by their team. They don't trust them to do it correctly, or they spend a lot of time checking their team's work. Customers are hiring consultants to implement improvements, but it doesn't work if you don't set aside time for us. You're paying for a service and at least initially sit with us, walk through your processes, tell us what is a pain point, and let us identify some areas that can be improved upon. If we don't have that time with your people, then we aren't going to be able to help you as much as we could.
