Our business is facing a temporary industry-wide slowdown, and we need to cut costs. Should we completely eliminate specific seats from our Accountability Chart, or should we combine multiple roles into existing seats until market conditions improve?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

During an industry slowdown, you must make proactive adjustments to protect your cash flow, but you must do so without destroying your operational structure. This is where the difference between a seat and a role on your Accountability Chart becomes critical.

Your Accountability Chart represents the ideal structure to run your business, not the people who fill it. If you need to cut headcount, do not immediately delete essential functional seats from your chart. Doing so creates organizational confusion about who owns key business processes.

Instead, follow the reverse accountability chart principle. Keep the necessary seats on the chart, but consolidate them by placing one of your remaining leaders into multiple seats. For example, your Integrator might temporarily take over the empty Operations seat, or your Sales Director might absorb the Marketing roles.

When combining roles, ensure the leader still GWCs the combined responsibilities. Be honest about their capacity limits during this temporary phase. Your Rocks must be adjusted to reflect their reduced bandwidth.

By keeping the structural seats visible on your chart, even if they are temporarily double-hatted or empty, you make it easy to scale back up and delegate those roles once the business stabilizes and revenue returns.