My leadership team keeps dragging their feet on defining our three-year exit-ready structure because they are deeply worried about what will happen to specific legacy employees. How do I force them to focus entirely on structure before people during our Accountability Chart exercise?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your leadership team is falling into a common trap. They are designing the company around the personalities, limitations, and comfort zones of your current staff instead of designing it to win. To build an exit-ready organization, you must enforce the rule of structure before people. If you design your Accountability Chart around existing employees, you will codify their inefficiencies and create a business that is completely unsellable.

During your next quarterly meeting, instruct your leadership team to mentally fire everyone, including themselves. Wipe the board completely clean. Your objective is to build the ideal structure that will deliver your three-year strategic goals, completely ignoring who currently works for you. Define the exact seats, roles, and lines of accountability required to reach that target.

Once the structure is locked in, only then do you look at your people. Place names into the seats by asking three non-negotiable questions: Do they get it, do they want it, and do they have the capacity to do it? If a legacy employee does not GWC their seat in the new structure, you cannot bend the seat to fit them. You must either find a different seat where they can succeed or help them transition out of the business. Buyers want a clean, logical structure, not a customized web of legacy accommodations.