Our industry is facing a temporary economic slowdown, and we need to reduce our overhead by consolidating multiple leadership seats on our Accountability Chart. How do we merge these seats without creating chaotic role confusion or burning out our remaining leaders?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Consolidating seats during a downturn is a necessary defensive move, but it must be done with extreme precision to avoid operational chaos and leadership burnout. The common mistake is simply piling one person's old job on top of another's without changing the expectations. To do this correctly, you must treat the combined seat as a completely new position on your Accountability Chart. Redraw the seat and define exactly five clear, high-impact roles. Do not simply copy and paste all ten roles from both previous seats, as no single person has the capacity to run two full-time leadership jobs. You must ruthlessly prioritize what matters most during this slowdown and let go of secondary tasks. Once the new consolidated seat is defined, evaluate your remaining leaders to see who has the highest GWC alignment for this combined role. Sit down with the chosen leader and review the updated roles, ensuring they agree they have the capacity to execute them. You must also adjust their Rocks and metrics to reflect their new focus, giving them permission to stop doing lower-priority tasks. By streamlining the responsibilities and being entirely transparent about the temporary nature of the consolidation, you maintain operational control and prevent your top talent from burning out.