Every day I see more companies with market, clients and projects. But without the team to execute.
And that stalls the business. Not a little. For real.
Projects delayed. Clients waiting. Executives absorbing work that isn’t theirs. Teams burning out. And a feeling I know well because I hear it every week:
“We’re growing, but it’s costing us too much.”
What they tell me. And what we find afterwards.
When a CEO or senior leader calls me, it almost always starts the same way:
“Recruitment just isn’t delivering what we need.” “The market is really tough.” “There’s a war for talent.” “We’ve been searching for months and people just don’t want to work anymore.”
I get it. It’s the most comfortable explanation. But also the most expensive one.
Because when we dig in, the problem is almost never in Recruitment. What we find is something deeper:
AI is reorganising teams and nobody knows how to manage it. I see CEOs watching competitors grow revenue while cutting headcount. They try to adopt AI and run into employees who resist, and a generational clash between those who’ve been there for years and those pushing for change. The problem isn’t technological. It’s organisational design and leadership.
Absenteeism has spiked and nobody is solving it. Sick leave out of control, CEOs feeling powerless, and one underlying symptom: people who don’t want to be where they are.
When you grow fast, you hire to plug gaps. You bring in people you’d have passed on in another era, but today you settle. No time to make them feel part of something. Meanwhile, people inside are comfortable and not raising the bar.
Those who’ve been there for years feel threatened by the changes. And the restless ones leave because they feel wasted.
Teams hiring without being able to explain why someone would kill to work there. Not in the sector, not in the role. In that specific team. Nobody has thought it through. Nobody has built it.
Managers and directors who don’t have the time — or the criteria — to get involved in the process from the start. They delegate to Recruitment, sign off the job description, and complain about the profiles that come back.
Keeping people engaged (please, stop saying “retaining” talent) has become harder. The bigger you get, the harder it is to personalise. And the top performers are the most impatient: they leave sooner if they don’t see progress fast enough. Not because they’re bad hires. But because what they found had nothing to do with what they were told. Or because the environment wasn’t ready to receive them.
From the beginning of May until today — less than three weeks — I’ve seen all of this: an industrial company with 32% turnover in a key role. A tech firm with three critical positions unfilled for eight months. And a services company where the best people have jumped ship. Different cases. Similar diagnosis.
The problem isn’t Recruitment. It’s design.
There’s a line I use a lot with my clients:
What happens below always reflects what’s happening above. Yes, really — it comes back to you, to the CEO, and to the leadership team.
When turnover rises, when talent comes and goes, when processes drag on without result — that’s not bad luck. It’s a signal. And it almost always points to how work is organised, how people are led, and what experience people actually have on the inside.
If the system pushes people out, adding more people doesn’t fix anything. It just means you lose money faster. As my partner Alfonso Roig puts it: if you pour water (profitability) into a bucket full of holes (undetected, unresolved problems), the strategic problem remains.
I compare it to adding more side dishes when what you need is a steak. Benefits, insurance, the gym, the fruit bowl — all fine. But if the work design is broken and leadership isn’t working, all of that is garnish. And people know it.
How it gets solved
The companies that have fixed this changed how they understand the problem.
They stopped asking why Recruitment isn’t delivering. And started asking why the talent they need doesn’t want to come — or doesn’t stay.
That question opens a different dimension entirely. It means looking at how work is organised. How people are led. What experience someone actually has when they join. How clearly each person understands what’s expected of them.
At Grupo Binternational, we see a company as a living system. That’s why we analyse these dynamics with our own methodology: our People Management Framework, through which we assess the health of the 9 areas — or organs — that most directly impact a company’s real capacity to attract, onboard and keep the talent it needs to deliver on its Strategic Plan.
Talent doesn’t just choose a role. It chooses a leader, a vision, an environment, an experience and a way of working.
If you have unfilled positions or turnover that won’t stop, write to me and tell me about your situation. The problem is probably not where you think it is.
