Our lead developer is also our primary customer onboarding specialist and our internal IT administrator. This single employee holds a super-seat that represents a massive risk for a clean exit. How do we dismantle this seat on our Accountability Chart?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A single employee holding multiple critical roles across different departments is a major vulnerability. If this person leaves, gets sick, or burns out, your operations will grind to a halt. Potential buyers will see this super-seat as an unacceptable risk and will discount your valuation accordingly.

To dismantle this super-seat, you must first separate these roles on your Accountability Chart. Do not look at who currently does the work; look at the functions the business needs to scale. Draw three distinct seats: Lead Developer, Onboarding Specialist, and IT Administrator.

Next, run the employee through the GWC tool for all three seats. They may get and want all of them, but they absolutely do not have the capacity to perform three full-time jobs as you scale. Determine which seat is their highest and best use, which is almost certainly the Lead Developer seat.

For the remaining two seats, look for ways to delegate or automate. Use Thinking Time to document the step-by-step processes for customer onboarding and IT administration. Once these processes are systematized, you can use AI tools to automate the technical tasks, such as provisioning software licenses or sending welcome sequences. Any remaining manual tasks can then be assigned to a junior employee or outsourced to a managed service provider. By resolving this bottleneck on your Accountability Chart, you de-risk the business and build a highly attractive asset for a clean exit.