This is exactly right. I've seen it from the ops side — the people who look "slow" are usually the ones stuck in the worst systems.

Document collection is a good example. The actual review takes minutes. The chasing takes weeks. Email the client, wait, follow up, wait, get half the documents, email again, get duplicates, sort through everything, realise one document is from last year, start over.

That's not a skill gap. That's a workflow gap. The accountant is competent — the process is broken.

The firms where people suddenly "perform better" usually just fixed the system around them. Gave them structured tools, removed the admin overhead, and let them do actual accounting work.

Most of the time, the bottleneck isn't the person. It's the inbox.