What Growing Teams Actually Need

For a long time, the default solution to operational pressure was simple: hire more people.

More tickets coming in? Add support staff.
More admin work? Bring in a virtual assistant.
More growth? Scale the team.

That approach made sense when work was centralized, teams were co-located, and communication happened in predictable channels.

That is not how most companies operate today.

Modern teams work across time zones. They manage multiple software platforms at once. Conversations live in Slack, email, CRMs, dashboards, project boards, and shared drives. And the amount of coordination required to keep everything moving has quietly increased.

This shift is measurable.

Microsoft’s 2023 Work Trend Index found that employees are interrupted every 11 minutes by meetings, emails, or messages, and that meetings per person have more than tripled since 2020. You can review the full report here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index-2023

When interruptions become constant, deep work becomes rare.

At the same time, Asana’s Anatomy of Work Global Index reports that knowledge workers spend only 53 percent of their time on skilled work. The remaining 47 percent is spent on coordination activities such as searching for information, status updates, and switching tools.
https://asana.com/resources/anatomy-of-work

Nearly half the workday is not execution. It is maintenance.

Harvard Business Review examined what researchers call the “toggle tax,” which measures time lost switching between digital applications. Their analysis found employees can lose close to four hours per week moving between tools.
https://hbr.org/2022/08/how-much-time-and-energy-do-we-waste-toggling-between-applications

Individually, these findings may seem manageable. Together, they describe a pattern: work has become structurally fragmented.

And fragmentation increases coordination cost.

The Misconception: More Help Fixes the Problem

When founders feel overwhelmed, the instinct is usually to look for help. That might mean hiring internally, contracting freelancers, or outsourcing specific functions.

Traditional outsourcing models, especially in the virtual assistant space, are typically structured around task execution and cost efficiency. The assumption is that once tasks are assigned to someone capable, the pressure eases.

But that assumption overlooks a larger issue: if the system that manages the work remains unclear, the coordination burden does not disappear. It simply shifts.

McKinsey & Company has repeatedly found that productivity improvements in knowledge work are more often achieved through workflow redesign and clearer decision rights than through adding headcount alone. Their research on workflow optimization can be reviewed here:
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/want-to-break-the-productivity-ceiling-rethink-the-way-work-gets-done

In other words, if the process is inefficient, adding more people to it does not automatically make it efficient.

It can make it heavier.

Managed Services vs Outsourcing: The Structural Difference

This is where the distinction between outsourcing and managed services becomes important.

Outsourcing typically focuses on who will do the work.

Managed services focus on how the work moves.

That difference is operational, not semantic.

In many outsourcing arrangements, the client retains responsibility for intake, prioritization, quality control, and coordination. The external contributor executes assigned tasks, but the workflow architecture remains internal.

A managed support model is designed differently. It integrates execution with oversight, structure, and defined ownership. Instead of simply adding labor, it embeds a system.

The Project Management Institute’s Pulse of the Profession research consistently identifies unclear roles and poor communication as leading causes of project underperformance.
https://www.pmi.org/learning/thought-leadership/pulse

Gallup’s workplace research shows employees who clearly understand what is expected of them are significantly less likely to experience burnout and significantly more engaged.
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236441/employee-burnout-part-main-causes.aspx

Both findings point toward a central principle: clarity improves outcomes.

Managed services apply that principle intentionally. They define intake channels. They assign ownership. They align workload with capacity. They establish reporting cadence. They include oversight.

It is not simply support. It is structured support.

Why Coordination Becomes the Real Bottleneck

As companies grow, complexity increases. More clients. More platforms. More workflows.

Asana’s research shows that 60 percent of time in organizations is spent on what it calls “work about work,” rather than value-creating activities.
https://asana.com/resources/anatomy-of-work

This includes clarifying assignments, chasing approvals, tracking status updates, and searching for documents.

Every additional contributor increases communication pathways. Without structure, complexity expands faster than output.

This is one reason why many growth-stage companies begin re-evaluating traditional outsourcing arrangements. Companies like PartnerHero, SupportNinja, and other managed service providers in the customer support and operations space have built models that integrate oversight and structured workflow rather than purely task-based delegation. The evolution of firms like TaskUs and Concentrix into more managed, process-driven support environments reflects the same shift.

The market is responding to a structural need.

It is not enough to have people who can do the work. There must be clarity around how the work is governed.

Shared Capacity vs Dedicated Capacity

Within managed services, capacity is structured intentionally.

Shared capacity allows coverage across recurring operational workflows without assigning a single full-time resource. It is appropriate when workload is consistent but distributed.

Dedicated capacity, often structured as a full seat, becomes necessary when operational intensity or specialization requires continuous ownership within a defined function.

The distinction is not about accountability. Both models operate within a defined system of ownership and reporting. The distinction is about allocation depth.

When capacity aligns with workload, and workload is governed by structure, performance becomes predictable.

When capacity is misaligned or structure is absent, pressure resurfaces quickly.

The Broader Shift in Competitive Advantage

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report emphasizes operational agility and workflow optimization as critical drivers of competitiveness in modern organizations.
https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023

Agility does not mean improvisation. It means being able to execute consistently under changing conditions.

Companies that design how work moves are better positioned to scale without rebuilding their support systems repeatedly.

This is the underlying reason managed services are increasingly replacing ad hoc outsourcing in growth-stage teams. The conversation is shifting from cost per hour to clarity per workflow.

The Question Leaders Should Ask

Before choosing between outsourcing and managed services, leaders should ask:

If something fails tomorrow, is there a defined system that identifies and corrects it, or does it depend on me noticing?

If the answer is the latter, coordination is still centralized.

Microsoft’s data on interruption, Asana’s data on coordination overload, Harvard Business Review’s analysis of digital switching costs, McKinsey’s research on workflow redesign, PMI’s findings on role clarity, and Gallup’s engagement research all converge on one conclusion:

Execution improves when structure improves.

Managed services are not about delegating tasks.

They are about designing execution.

And in modern growth environments, execution design determines whether companies scale smoothly or stall under complexity.