A little while ago, in a room full of directors, I asked a question about a supermarket: to open a shift you need, let’s say, twelve people. “How many days have you opened that store with ten or fewer?”
The answer came without a second thought: nearly every day.
I like that question because it doesn’t point the finger at anyone. It simply switches on a light. And it almost always lights up the same thing: that we’ve been running for a long time on less capacity than we think we have, and we’ve got used to it. That’s what this article is about: real organisational capacity, not the kind that shows up on the org chart.
Let me tell you how we look at this, because I think it’ll be useful to you.
The lava and the chamber
Picture your organisation as a volcano.
At the top is the lava. The lava is everything you can already see, everything that already hurts, everything that’s already hitting the P&L. In a factory, it’s the order that goes out late or incomplete. In retail, it’s the shift you open half-staffed. The fresh-fish counter that doesn’t open today, which doesn’t just cost you the fish you’ll throw away, but teaches the customer not to come back for it. In a services business, it’s the project you have to turn down because you’ve no one to deliver it. The lava is uncomfortable, but at least it’s honest: you can see it.
Underneath, down in the slope, is the magma chamber. And the chamber is where the real party gets going.
In the chamber are your teams and their friction. There’s the coordinator living somewhere between the painkillers and some very dark thoughts, because every morning two people ring to say they’re not coming in and it falls to them to move people from one end to the other. There’s the person who joined full of enthusiasm, looked around, and decided to leave within a few weeks. And instead of asking ourselves what they saw, we said “another lightweight in their twenties”. There’s the one who stays, who carries the rest, and whom nobody looks after because, well, they cope.
The lava is the consequence. The chamber is the cause. And almost all of us pour our energy into putting out, or cooling, the lava.
Death by a thousand cuts
There’s an English expression that captures what goes on down there rather well: death by a thousand cuts.
A cut on your arm won’t kill anyone. Asking someone to stay on a Saturday won’t either. The problem is the thousandth cut. “How many Saturdays have you been asking me for now?” “He doesn’t show up and I do.” “I’m always the one who does this.” None of those sentences, on its own, looks serious. Together, or repeated often enough, they produce a system failure.
And here’s a trap nearly all of us fall into, and I’ll say it without anaesthetic because it matters: complacency. “But we already do plenty of things well, and we’ve got initiatives under way.” That’s probably true. But if you’ve got lava coming out of the top, doing plenty of things well isn’t enough. And if there’s a lot of noise in the chamber, that isn’t enough either. The useful question isn’t what am I doing well; it’s what am I failing to change despite everything I’m already doing.
The detail almost nobody measures
There’s a line I repeat a lot, because I think it’s the most important of all: when I’m in a bad way, I’m a far worse manager. Not a bit worse. Far worse.
When a manager is having a bad day — and a bad day can last months — three things happen. First, there are issues they’d normally spot and today simply don’t see. Second, there are others they ought to tackle and decide not to wade into. And third, there are some they do act on, but with a very different result from the one they wanted. They’ve got all the technical ability in the world and the best of intentions, but they hit the ball badly and put it out of the stadium.
That’s why two figures worry me in particular. The doer-manager, who doesn’t occupy their own role because they’re still doing far too much themselves; they hold the team back and entrench a mutual mistrust: because I don’t trust you, I don’t ask you; because I don’t ask you, you don’t trust me either; because we don’t tell each other anything, we don’t make progress. And the sufferer-manager, on whom it rains from above and below at once, and who, by being in a bad way, generates far more problems than they solve. With the doer you lose capacity. With the sufferer, you spread anxiety, stress and frustration to everyone else.
Where you really stake your strategy
A company stakes its strategy on its critical teams; insufficient organisational capacity in a key area isn’t an operational problem but a business risk.
If I ask you which teams matter in your company, you’ll tell me — quite rightly — all of them. But some more than others. And depending on the moment, some far more than others.
If you’re a manufacturer and your key clients are asking you for new products, your R&D is sacred this year. If demand rises, the plant is sacred. And there are areas that looked secondary until they stopped being so: maintenance isn’t the heart of any factory… until each technician is getting three calls a week from the competition, gets fed up with the pressure, and starts heading for the exit. Insufficient capacity in a team soon turns it into a critical area. It isn’t an operational problem. It’s a business risk, in every sense of the word.
So the honest conversation is twofold. First: where am I really staking it this year? And second, with no self-deception: in those teams, do I have the capacity I need, or do I just think I do?
Careful with doing this exercise by halves, because doing it badly is more counterproductive than not doing it at all.
What is organisational capacity, and why isn’t it the same as headcount?
Organisational capacity is what a team can genuinely deliver, and it depends on each person’s wellbeing and contribution, not on the number of filled roles. A company can have a full headcount and its real capacity half empty.
Here’s the misunderstanding that costs the most. We confuse capacity with headcount.
In a room of eleven people with eleven approved roles, on paper we’re at a hundred per cent. The reality is something else. Real capacity depends on how each person is doing, on how well we get on, on how much clarity there is about what’s expected of each role, on how much responsibility each person takes on, on the tools they’re working with, on the way of working, on how they feel about the company. You can have the headcount full and the capacity half empty.
We look at it through two very simple variables: wellbeing and contribution. How the person is today (today, not three weeks ago) and what they’re really giving the business — contribution in its full sense: not just whether they do their own job well, but whether they add or drain energy from everyone else. Because there are people who walk into a store or a plant and lift everyone’s spirits, and there are people who sink the team even while doing their own part. That’s contribution too. And it weighs an enormous amount.
First step to improving contribution: where do you place the people on your team on this matrix? © Grupo Binternational
When you place your people on that map, uncomfortable truths surface. The person you look after but expect almost nothing from: you’re tolerating capacity far below what they could give, and the day the business needs that team to step up, they won’t be able to. And the person far over to the right but very low down, giving everything, at their limit: that’s the one who’s about to leave you. They’re the one who was holding the rest together. And when one goes, others go too, or call in sick. I’ve seen cases of half a team disappearing on the same day. One of the reasons was that the person who’d been holding everyone up couldn’t take any more, and once she wasn’t there, the others didn’t stay either.
A team has the right capacity when most of its people are moving in the right places on the map. And that doesn’t happen by chance: it takes a system, and it takes managing.
Why this is a CEO conversation
Let me admit why I’m writing all this in business terms and not in the language of good intentions.
Looking after people, on its own, is a conversation many boards listen to politely and then file away. But none of what I’ve told you here is about caring for the sake of caring. It is, quite literally, a review of your company’s risk management: where the risk sits today of not achieving what your strategy is asking of you. The lava that’s already making you bill less than you could, or lose the trust of a client you let down. The chamber that’s going to erupt at the worst possible moment. The capacity you thought you had and don’t.
The last question I tend to throw out is this one: why wouldn’t a CEO sit down for a conversation like this? The usual answer is “because they’ve got too much to do”. And the reality is the opposite: CEOs come to these conversations every time. Every time. Because the moment you see it’s about securing the strategy and understanding the risks, it stops being a people topic and becomes a business one.
So I’ll leave you with a single task for this week, no rush: take a look into your volcano. See what lava you’re already paying for. And, above all, ask yourself what’s brewing in the chamber before it rises.
If you’d like, we can take a look at it together.
Frequently asked questions
What is organisational capacity?
It’s what a team can genuinely deliver to meet the company’s strategy. It’s measured by each person’s wellbeing and contribution, not by the number of filled roles.
Why doesn’t a full headcount guarantee capacity?
Because real capacity depends on how each person is doing, on role clarity, and on whether they add or drain energy from the team. You can have a full org chart and half-empty capacity.
How do you improve a team’s organisational capacity?
By placing each person on a wellbeing-and-contribution map, spotting who is under-stretched and who is under-supported, and managing it with a system rather than improvising.
How does organisational capacity relate to the business?
Directly: insufficient capacity in a critical team turns into undelivered orders, declined projects or lost clients. It’s a question of risk management, not just HR.
