Reclaim capacity without blowing everything up

Somewhere between onboarding your last hire and rewriting your third process doc, your People Plan lost steam. Or maybe it never really had any.

It’s not that your team isn’t good – they are. It’s just that right now, everything feels a bit too reactive. Advice is still going out the door, but not without a few too many speed bumps.

There’s a sense that your people could be doing more, contributing more, owning more – but no one has the headspace to work out how. So you keep going, holding it all together, but with a quiet frustration and a heavy, invisible lid on any real growth.

Sound familiar? Well, it’s your lucky day: that’s exactly what a 90-day People Plan is built to fix.

In a previous piece, we explored why every advice firm needs a smart, intentional People Plan – not just to hire well, but to build a team that fits your strategy, culture and future growth. This article is about what happens next: turning that plan into momentum, clarity and flow.

Now, a People Plan doesn’t involve a drawn-out restructure or a set-and-forget org chart. It's just a short, sharp reset that gets everyone refocused on who’s doing what, what’s working (and what’s not) and how you can reclaim capacity without blowing everything up. It’s practical, fast and designed for advice firms with no time to waste.

At Zestt, we’ve been helping advice teams use this 90-day window to get out of overwhelm and into flow – without the stress, inefficiencies or time-sucking meetings.

It reminds me of something I often notice in my downtime.

I’m a bit of a foodie, and there’s something I love about sitting in a well-run café or restaurant and just watching the people work. In the best places, the team moves like dancers: smooth, purposeful, and in sync. Everyone knows where their colleagues are without needing to ask.

It’s graceful, almost hypnotic. In a less-coordinated venue, though, it’s more like a game of bumper cars – noisy, reactive and exhausting for everyone involved. I often find myself quietly watching the "dance" and noticing where and how the choreography could be sharper. 

Think of your advice team like a restaurant in the middle of a dinner rush. You’ve got capable people working hard, but they're working without clear roles, direction or communication; orders get missed, meals go cold and chaos builds. The head chef ends up doing the dishes.

The solution isn’t more chefs , though; it's simply getting your team to work better – together. That’s what a People Plan is really about: tightening the steps so the whole team moves smoothly. You need better flow. That’s exactly what a 90-day People Plan delivers.

Here’s how it works.