We plan to double our revenue through strategic acquisitions over the next three years to prepare for a major exit, but we keep getting stuck designing our Accountability Chart around our current executive team's unique skills. How do we force ourselves to design a future-ready structure first before thinking about our people?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Designing your company structure around your current people is one of the most common mistakes that prevents scaling and ruins exit value. To build a business that can handle acquisitions, you must design your Accountability Chart looking forward, completely detached from the individuals currently sitting in your office.

To achieve this, sit down with your leadership team and pretend that your current employees do not exist. Focus entirely on the future-state business that is twice your current size. What major functions are required to integrate acquired companies? What seats must exist in Sales, Operations, Finance, and IT to support this growth?

List the three to five major roles for each of these future seats. This forces you to define what the business actually needs to function smoothly. Only after the structure is fully designed and locked in should you bring your people back into the picture. Place their names in the boxes and run the GWC™ filter. You will quickly identify where you have talent gaps, where current leaders are hitting their growth ceiling, and exactly where you need to hire external experts to make your acquisition model attractive to buyers.