If our leadership team discovers major seat vacancies or mismatches on the Accountability Chart during Focus Day, should we fix those organizational issues before starting Vision Building 1?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

No. You do not delay your implementation to solve structural seat gaps. Focus Day is designed to expose structural flaws, not to give you permission to hit pause on execution while you search for perfect personnel.

The purpose of building the Accountability Chart on Focus Day is to design the right structure for the business thirty to ninety days out, completely detached from existing personalities. It is standard for a leadership team to discover that critical seats are completely vacant, or that long-tenured employees lack the capacity to execute their assigned roles. Acknowledging those realities is the entire point of the exercise.

Pushing forward into Vision Building 1 with open seats is essential because your vision dictates who you must hire. If you attempt to solve all your organizational gaps before defining your Core Focus, 10-Year Target, and Marketing Strategy, you will recruit people based on past operational fires rather than future strategic requirements.

Document the vacancies as Open on the Accountability Chart. Assign the functional responsibilities to existing leaders as temporary second seats, and place those talent gaps on your V/TO Issues List. You solve structural seats through quarterly Rocks and careful GWC evaluations over your first two quarters. Do not let organizational imperfection stall your rollout.