What’s Wasting More Time: Tools, People, or Policies?

“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”
— Michael Altshuler

Let’s rewind to 2022.

I was advising a midsized fintech firm one with an impressive suite of tools, sharp people, and seemingly airtight systems. Yet, month after month, they couldn’t hit their quarterly growth goals. The leadership team was stuck in a Groundhog Day loop: missed deadlines, bloated meetings, and a persistent feeling that no one had enough time.

The CEO finally snapped during a strategy call:

“I’m spending $400K a year on productivity tools. Why are we still so inefficient?”

And there it was the real question.

What’s actually slowing down your business: the tools you’re using, the people you’ve hired, or the policies you’ve implemented?

If you’re like most business owners, your knee-jerk answer might be “it’s a people problem.” Or maybe “our tech stack is bloated.” But the truth is more nuanced and the consequences more expensive than you think.

The Modern Time Sink: Death by a Thousand Cuts

Time, unlike capital, can’t be raised, borrowed, or stored. Once it’s spent, it’s gone. Yet most companies hemorrhage time daily without a clear culprit.

Let’s look at the facts:

• Workers waste an average of 1.8 hours per day on inefficient processes, costing businesses $1.8 trillion annually in the U.S. alone. (Source: IDC)
  
• Employees spend 20% of their workweek searching for internal information or tracking down colleagues. (Source: McKinsey)
  
• Only 60% of time at work is spent productively, with the rest eaten up by administrative overhead, tool toggling, or unclear decision-making channels. (Source: Asana, 2022)
  

So what’s really to blame? Let’s break it down one suspect at a time.

Tool Overload: When Technology Becomes the Thief

If you’ve ever added a new app to “streamline communication” only to have your team ghost Slack because they’re buried in Asana, you’re not alone.

The average company uses 110 SaaS applications, up from just 8 a decade ago. (Source: BetterCloud)

Ironically, this tech explosion often adds friction.

• Context switching moving between apps costs workers up to 40% of their productive time. (Harvard Business Review)
  
• Overlapping tools (like Teams, Slack, Zoom, and Loom) create decision paralysis: “Where do I post this? Who will see it?”
  
• Integration fails become landmines. If your CRM doesn’t talk to your billing system, your team becomes the API manually reconciling data across platforms. For a deeper dive into optimizing your tech stack, explore Are You Falling Behind Competitors Using Smarter Tools?
  

Metaphor check: A cluttered tech stack is like a gym full of equipment and no workout plan. Just because you can lift with twelve machines doesn’t mean you should.

What to watch for:

• Redundant tools that do the same job
  
• Platforms with low adoption rates
  
• Manual workarounds for tools meant to automate
  

If you’re solving inefficiency with more software, you might be applying Band-Aids to a broken bone.

People Problems: The Hardest to Spot, the Costliest to Ignore

Let’s get uncomfortable for a moment.

Sometimes it’s not the tools or the playbook it’s the players.

But here’s where nuance matters: The problem isn’t “bad” employees. It’s misaligned roles, unclear responsibilities, and skill gaps.

Consider this:

• Only 33% of employees strongly agree they know what’s expected of them at work. (Gallup, 2023)
  
• High-performing teams are 37% more likely to have clearly defined roles and ownership. (Google’s Project Aristotle)
  
• Lack of collaboration and poor communication cost small businesses an average of $420,000 annually. (SHRM)
  

And yet, most businesses double down on hiring when things slow down without addressing foundational issues like:

• Does each person know how their work impacts the bigger picture?
  
• Are high performers covering for underperformers?
  
• Are your managers trained to coach not just manage?
  

One bad fit can tank a sprint. One toxic teammate can torpedo a culture.

And one heroic employee, propping up broken systems for too long, will eventually burn out or walk. Boost your team’s effectiveness with strategies from ROI Rockets: High-Level Marketing Tactics That Soar.

Policy Paralysis: Bureaucracy in a Small Business Wrapper

This one hits hard because it sneaks up on even the leanest startups.

Policies start with good intent structure, compliance, consistency. But they metastasize into red tape if left unchecked.

Here’s what it looks like in practice:

• A five-step approval process for a $200 software license
  
• Mandatory meetings that no longer serve a purpose
  
• Permission-based cultures where decision-making is a privilege, not a process
  

A 2023 study by Harvard found that over-complexity in business operations reduced productivity by 25%—and much of that stemmed from policy bloat.

Metaphorically speaking, bloated policies are like cholesterol: invisible until they block critical arteries in your workflow.

Ask yourself:

• What processes exist simply because “that’s how we’ve always done it”?
  
• How many tasks could be handled with fewer stakeholders—or none at all?
  
• Do your policies scale with growth, or do they stifle it?

Learn how to innovate and adapt policies in Trend Turbulence: Riding the Waves of Business Innovation

So, What’s Really to Blame?

Spoiler: it’s all three.

But not equally. And not always in ways you expect.

Let’s revisit the fintech firm I mentioned earlier. Here’s what our audit found:

• Tools: 18 different SaaS apps many with overlapping features
  
• People: Project managers juggling up to 9 reports each, with unclear KPI ownership
  
• Policies: A change management process that required 5 approvals per adjustment
  

Fixing it wasn’t about scrapping everything. It was about subtracting smarter than they were adding.

Here’s what we did:

• Consolidated tools and created a single source of truth
  
• Redefined roles, promoted cross-functional ownership, and retrained managers
  
• Slashed unnecessary approvals and empowered frontline teams to make real-time decisions
  

Result?
A 27% increase in project delivery speed.
$120,000 saved in annual software spend.
And maybe most importantly a leadership team that finally had time to lead. If rapid growth is causing friction in your systems, read The Growth Trap: Why Scaling Too Fast Can Cripple Your Business

How to Audit Your Own Business Time-Wasters

Don’t wait for chaos to force your hand. Start with a self-assessment across these three dimensions:

1. Tools Audit

• List all the platforms you use across departments
  
• Rank usage frequency, adoption rate, and redundancy
  
• Evaluate if each tool is saving time or costing it
  

2. People Audit

• Review job descriptions vs. actual day-to-day duties
  
• Survey team members about clarity, autonomy, and blockers
  
• Identify coaching gaps among managers
  

3. Policy Audit

• Map out approval flows where does decision-making stall?
  
• Kill legacy processes that don’t tie to current outcomes
  
• Invite team suggestions: What policies slow you down?
  

Use this trifecta to separate the signal from the noise and don’t be afraid to remove what no longer serves your team.

The Real Question: What Are You Tolerating?

If you’ve made it this far, there’s a good chance you already know something isn’t working.

Maybe it’s your $25K-a-year project management software nobody uses.
Maybe it’s that one department where ideas go to die.
Or maybe it’s a “decision-making process” that feels more like a decision-deferral protocol.

Whatever it is it’s costing you.

Time isn’t just a resource. It’s your company’s bloodstream. And every tool, person, or policy that clogs it is stealing your velocity.

Here’s the Mindset Shift

You don’t fix time-wasters with more effort.
You fix them with clarity.

• Clarity about the real blockers not just the visible ones.
  
• Clarity about what’s essential vs. what’s legacy.
  
• Clarity about who is doing what and why it matters.
  

When you clear the fog, people move faster. Tools earn their keep. Policies do their job and stay out of the way.

That’s when your business runs not drags.
That’s when your time becomes an asset, not a casualty.

So what’s actually slowing you down?

And more importantly… what are you ready to subtract?