The gear that's stuck

Picture a machine with a dozen gears. Eleven turn freely. One is stuck — worn, misaligned, or simply the wrong size for what's asked of it. From the outside, the whole machine looks slow.

The instinct is to add more gears: another channel, another offer, another hire. But more parts on a system with one stuck gear rarely helps. It usually adds friction elsewhere.

Finding the stuck gear takes a different kind of looking — across strategy, offer, communication and experience at once, rather than one department at a time. Once it's visible, the fix is often smaller than expected.