We have a highly talented employee who is a perfect core values fit and sits in a single seat labeled Special Projects, but their actual daily roles span across IT, marketing, and office management. This Swiss Army Knife seat is starting to crack under pressure. How do we restructure this?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The Swiss Army Knife seat is a major operational hazard. While it is tempting to dump miscellaneous responsibilities onto a highly capable employee, it eventually leads to burnout and massive structural vulnerability. When that person leaves or gets overwhelmed, three separate departments suffer. You must eliminate the generic Special Projects seat from your Accountability Chart. Start by listing every single task and responsibility this employee currently handles. Group these tasks by function: IT, marketing, and office management. You will quickly see that these are actually roles belonging to three distinct, specialized seats on your chart. Once you have defined these seats, you must make a decision. Have this employee sit in the one seat where they have the highest GWC and where their efforts will drive the most value. For the remaining seats, you must temporarily list them as vacant or assign them to other team members who have the capacity. By specializing their focus, you allow them to excel instead of constantly firefighting across multiple departments. This also makes your organization much easier to scale, as you can now hire entry level resources to fill the other, clearly defined seats.