Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

What isn't getting done that should be getting done? How much is that costing the company every year?

Maybe the solution is to outsource some of the work, and then your job would be to oversee the contractors working on projects for you. Then you wouldn't really need any additional [internal] staffing.

Mgoodman is on it. Companies only want to add resources if doing so will improve the business. There has to be things that are not happening, and some of those things are costing the company money. It can be hard to estimate, but if you can, showing this lost income versus the cost of the new resource is a good way to show why the new resource is needed.

And as Mgoodman also says, an alternate route is to add contract resource/consultants for specific projects. If you can show work that is not getting done under current resources that the higher-ups want to have done, it is often easier for them to agree to contract resources for this (which allows more flexibility - they can be dropped if the project doesn't pan out or cash flow gets tight). After you get to a critical mass of contract resources being used, it then makes the argument easier as to why a permanent head count should be used instead of some of the contract resources (and you would promote the benefit of permanent resources over contract).