We created a Special Projects seat on our Accountability Chart to house our former VP of Sales who is transitioning out of his leadership role. Now, his responsibilities are completely vague, and he is not driving any measurable results. How do we clean up this fake seat?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a long-time leader transitions out of their role, owners often create vague placeholder seats like Special Projects on the Accountability Chart to keep them on the payroll and avoid difficult conversations. This is a massive mistake. These fake seats lack clear definitions, have no measurable outcomes, and create confusion among the rest of the leadership team regarding who actually owns what.

Every single seat on your Accountability Chart must be real, necessary, and designed to move the business forward. A real seat must have five clear roles, a reporting relationship, and measurable scorecards. If you cannot define five distinct roles that directly contribute to your business goals, the seat should not exist.

If you want to retain a transitioning leader's expertise, do not clutter your operational structure with a fake seat. Instead, transition them to a clean external consulting arrangement or a defined advisory role that sits outside the day-to-day operating system. If they do not GWC a real, necessary seat on your chart, you must have the courage to transition them out of the company. Keeping people in manufactured seats destroys your team's trust in the integrity of your Accountability Chart.