^{A STRATEGY, SYSTEM & SKILL}

You’re not the bottleneck. Your system is.

A while ago, a client said something that resonated far too much:

“I had so much time... until suddenly I didn’t.”

He’s a team of one, running the full content machine at a tech company.

One minute he’s ahead of schedule, feeling good.

The next minute? Surprise deliverables. SME approvals. Event reports he didn’t know were happening.

Everything on fire. Everything urgent.

And suddenly... he feels like he is the bottleneck.

Sound familiar?

If you’re a solopreneur, a consultant, or the “one-person content team”, you’ve likely lived this too.

THE STORY: A Plan with No Punch

Here’s what was happening behind the scenes for him:

• Content calendar? Beautiful — until the last-minute report requests came in.

• Newsletter plan? Solid — until a stakeholder decided they needed to "tweak the messaging" after final drafts.

• Blog backlog? Healthy — until development schedules jumped ahead without updates.

The worst part?

Every time, he looked like the delay.

Every time, he bore the pressure.

The system had invisible bottlenecks… and that made it harder to manage stakeholder expectations.

THE STRATEGY: Map the Gates & Invisible Blockers

Here’s what we did first: Stop trying to work harder.

Instead, of taking that as a failure of his ability, we mapped the gates every content piece had to pass through:

• Drafting

• Internal Review

• SME Approval

• Publish

• Repurpose

And we asked: Where exactly does it get stuck?

Because when you can name the gates, you can:

• Show when and where delays happen.

• Protect yourself from unfair blame.

• Plan around real lead times, not fantasy timelines.

Visibility = Power

THE SYSTEM: How to Build a Defensible Workflow

Here’s the simple system we built to get him back in control:

1. Document your actual process, not your ideal one.
(Including ugly bottlenecks and approval loops.)

2. Build overlapping timelines.
(While one piece is stuck in approval, you're drafting the next. Dovetail your work.)

3. Track bottlenecks publicly.
(Use a shared tracker, Notion, Asana, even a Google Sheet, to show when an article is waiting vs. in motion.)

4. Request specific feedback, not open-ended reviews.
(Ask: "Is the framing right?" not "Thoughts?")

5. Outsource or automate ugly first drafts.
(Save your creative energy for the parts only you can do.)

When does the big shift come in?

When you stop thinking "I'm failing" and start thinking "The system needs strengthening".

That’s when you shift from being the bottleneck… to being the builder.

And where I bet you’ll start to have a lot more fun! 😉 

Over to you:
Where does your content (or project) actually get stuck the most?

Hit reply or comment below, I’d love to hear what you’re dealing with. (Seriously. Even if it’s messy. Especially if it’s messy.)

^{UPCOMING EVENT:}

KNOWLEDGE DROP:

These are the latest bits of expertise directly from our Candid Consultants just for you:

• Product Audits: Types and Tricks

• The Do-Feel-Think-Know Framework for planning your work

• How to Change Your Circle.so Community Font (with custom code)

• Learn How to Systemise Creativity (even when you’re stuck)