Our co-founder is currently sitting in the VP of Sales, VP of Marketing, and VP of Operations seats on our Accountability Chart. They claim they are managing all three departments fine, but our growth is flatlining. How do we address this seat-hogging issue on our leadership team?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

No one can effectively lead three major departments at the same time. While your co-founder may be working incredibly hard, they are spreading their focus too thin, which is exactly why your growth has stalled. Each major seat on the leadership team requires 100 percent of a leader's focus to run effectively. When one person occupies multiple leadership seats, they are unable to give any of them the deep strategic thinking and accountability they require. To solve this, use your next quarterly meeting to review the Accountability Chart. Map out the five key roles for each of these three seats. Ask your co-founder to objectively evaluate their own capacity using GWC™. They must choose which single seat they are most passionate about and where they deliver the highest impact. Once they select their primary seat, the other two seats must be marked as open on your chart. Develop a transition plan to delegate or hire for those open seats over the next two quarters. This will free up your co-founder to excel in their one true seat, while bringing fresh leadership energy to the other departments.