Are You Building a Team of Doers or a Team of Thinkers?

Many finance teams are full of capable people doing work that adds little value: chasing approvals, matching invoices and correcting errors. Hunters instead of financiers. Although the work always gets done, it leaves little time for anything else. At the same time, organisations are asking finance to play a bigger role in forecasting, planning, and decision-making. Those expectations create a problems when finance teams are buried in administration and have little time for much else.

The Hidden Cost of Administrative Work

Manual processes do more than consume time, they limit capacity. When talented people spend most of their day completing repetitive tasks, opportunities for analysis, innovation, and business partnering are lost. The impact extends beyond productivity. Gallup research shows that employees experiencing high levels of administrative burden and unclear processes are more likely to report stress and burnout (Gallup, 2024). There is no difference for finance leaders, and it creates a difficult balance.

Protect the team’s wellbeing while meeting growing expectations.

Strategy Needs Space

Strategic finance requires time, it does not happen in the gaps between operational tasks. It takes time to understand the business, to analyse trends, to explore & plan different scenarios, and time to support decision-making. That time is difficult to find when manual work dominates the day. McKinsey estimates that automation technologies can significantly reduce the time spent on routine activities, creating capacity for higher-value work (McKinsey & Company, 2023). The challenge for finance leaders is not simply reducing workload though, it is redesigning work.

From Processing to Partnership

High-performing finance teams are not defined by how quickly they process transactions. They are defined by the quality of the decisions they help the business make. That shift requires a different operating model, one facilitated by systems which handle repetitive work and people who focus on insight. One where finance becomes a strategic partner rather than a processing function. Because the most valuable finance teams are not the busiest, they are the ones with the time and capacity to think.

References

Gallup (2024) State of the Global Workplace 2024 Report. Available at: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx (Accessed: 19 June 2026).
McKinsey & Company (2023) The Economic Potential of Generative AI: The Next Productivity Frontier. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-economic-potential-of-generative-ai-the-next-productivity-frontier (Accessed: 19 June 2026).