We are using AI to automate several major components of our operations, but we are struggling to decide if we should modify the roles of our existing seats or create entirely new, AI-focused seats on our Accountability Chart. How do we make this structural decision?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When integrating AI into your workflows, your decision to modify existing seats or create new ones must be driven by the work itself, not the technology. Do not create an AI seat just because it sounds modern.

Start by looking at the outcome you want to achieve. If AI is simply making an existing seat more efficient, you should modify the roles of that current seat. For example, if your marketing manager is now using generative AI to produce content, the seat remains the same, but the roles change from writing copy to managing AI content generation and editorial quality.

However, if the technology creates an entirely new business function, you must design a new seat. If you are deploying proprietary customer support agents that require constant prompt engineering, model tuning, and data integration, that is a highly technical function that does not fit under normal operations. In this case, you should create a dedicated AI Systems seat.

Define the five major roles for this new seat, ensure it has a clear reporting relationship on your Accountability Chart, and confirm that the person occupying it fully GWCs the technical requirements of the role.