Why Waiting to Fix Small Problems Is Costing You Millions
- Holly Hartman
- Dec 14
- 3 min read
Most execution failures in professional services firms don’t start as crises.
They start as small problems that feel too minor to fix.
A confusing handoff.
A decision that takes an extra meeting.
A workaround someone quietly builds to keep work moving.
Individually, none of these feel urgent.
Collectively, they compound into margin erosion.
The Counterintuitive Truth
The most expensive problems in your firm are the ones you tolerate the longest.
Leaders often believe they are prioritizing correctly by focusing only on “big issues.”
In reality, they are allowing small coordination failures to quietly accumulate into systemic cost.
The Real Cost of “It’s Not Worth Fixing Yet”
In mid-size professional service firms, coordination failures don’t announce themselves loudly. They hide in plain sight.
They show up as:
Rework that feels unavoidable
Decisions that stall across teams
Escalations that “come out of nowhere”
Leaders acting as constant firebreaks
Margins tightening despite strong demand
These are not people problems.
They are system problems.
When small execution breakdowns go unfixed, they create what we call Collaboration Tax.
Collaboration Tax is the hidden cost
organizations pay when work doesn’t flow cleanly across people and teams. It shows up as rework, delays, escalation, burnout, and margin erosion.
It rarely appears on a P&L as a single line item.
It accumulates quietly until leaders feel it everywhere.
Why Leaders Miss the Warning Signs
Most firms don’t lack intelligence or effort.
They lack early visibility.
Small issues are often:
Worked around instead of resolved
Considered “not big enough” to escalate
Solved locally in ways that create inconsistency
Normalized as “the cost of growth”
By the time leadership notices the problem, the cost has already been paid:
In write-offs
In leadership bandwidth
In delayed delivery
In client confidence
At that point, the fix is no longer cheap.
Prevention Is Cheaper Than Recovery
Here’s the counterintuitive move strong leaders make:
They stop waiting for problems to become obvious.
Instead of reacting to escalations, they design early detection into the system.
This is where Signal Capture matters.
Signal Capture is an execution early-warning system. It is a structured way to surface small coordination problems early, before they turn into rework, escalation, or margin loss.
It is not:
A suggestion box
A culture initiative
Another meeting
A feedback exercise
It is operational discipline.
What Small Signals Actually Tell You
Small, repeated issues are not noise. They are data.
They tell you:
Where decision rights are unclear
Where handoffs are breaking
Where tools don’t match how work actually happens
Where leaders are compensating for weak systems
Where Collaboration Tax is accumulating fastest
When leaders ignore these signals, they don’t disappear.
They compound.
The Leadership Trap
Many leaders believe:
“I’ll deal with that once it becomes a real problem.”
The reality:
By the time it becomes visible, it is already expensive.
The firms that protect margin over time don’t move faster.
They intervene earlier.
They fix small system failures while they are still cheap, contained, and politically easy to solve.
The Bottom Line
If execution feels harder than it should, the problem isn’t urgency or effort.
It’s delayed intervention.
The highest-ROI leadership move is not heroic problem-solving.
It’s building systems that surface friction before it scales.
Because in professional services firms, waiting is rarely neutral.
It is quietly costing you more than you think.
About the Author
Holly Hartman is the founder of CollabIntel Consulting Group, a firm specializing in reducing Collaboration Tax in mid-size professional services organizations. She works with senior executives and operations leaders to resolve the execution failures that erode margin and reduce overall profitability. Holly’s work focuses on strengthening the human, team, and execution systems behind reliable delivery—bringing clarity to the hidden dynamics that make execution feel harder than it should.
Next Steps for Your Organization
If your firm is experiencing rising rework, tightening margins, or execution friction that’s difficult to pinpoint, CollabIntel offers a structured diagnostic to surface where breakdowns are occurring and why.
To explore whether this is a fit for your organization, request an initial conversation.
Comments