Fix Process Before Hiring: The Operational Lever Investors Notice

Many founders hire to fix chaos: delayed approvals, rework loops, tribal knowledge, and numbers that do not reconcile. The result is more payroll and more expensive chaos. This post shows how to pull the operational lever first: document the few workflows that create value, clarify decision rights, measure the bottleneck, and automate repeatable handoffs so execution becomes predictable. You will learn what sophisticated investors test first, a pass/fail checklist, an interactive readiness scorecard, and a practical 6-8 week plan with owners. Use it to decide whether to hire now or remove the constraint that makes hiring feel necessary in the first place.