Our leadership team members are currently sitting in three or four different seats each on our Accountability Chart, and we are starting to see dropped balls. What is the limit on how many hats one person can wear?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In the early stages of a company, it is completely normal for leaders to wear multiple hats. However, as you scale, this becomes a major bottleneck.

There is a hard physical and mental limit to how many seats one person can realistically own. Generally, a leader can successfully own two seats on the Accountability Chart if one of those seats is temporary or requires minimal weekly focus.

Once a person is sitting in three or more seats, they do not have the capacity to do any of them exceptionally well. They are constantly context switching, which drains their cognitive energy and leads to dropped balls.

To fix this, you must run a capacity check during your next leadership meeting.

Have each leader list the seats they currently occupy and estimate the percentage of their weekly time spent on each. If a leader is spending forty percent on sales, forty percent on operations, and twenty percent on HR, they are failing at all three.

Use Thinking Time to ask how you might reorganize the seats to delegate the lower-value tasks first. Identify which seats can be combined, which can be outsourced, and which require a new hire.

Your goal should be to get every member of your leadership team down to one primary seat. This focus allows them to truly master their role, drive their Rocks, and hold their team accountable, which is essential to prepare your business for a clean, highly valued exit.