I understand the rule of putting structure before people, but every time I sit down to draw our Accountability Chart, I find myself drawing boxes that perfectly fit the quirky skill sets of my three longest-tenured employees. How do I break this habit and build a clean structure first?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Building an Accountability Chart around the unique personalities and quirks of your legacy employees is the fastest way to cap your company growth. When you design boxes to fit specific people, you build a fragile, chaotic structure that cannot scale and will look like a liability to potential buyers.

To break this habit, you must mentally fire everyone in the company, including yourself. Sit down with your leadership team and start with a completely blank canvas.

Ask yourself this question: If we were starting this business from scratch today, with the goal of hitting our three-year target, what is the absolute best structure to get us there?

Design the seats based purely on function, flow, and accountability. Each seat must have no more than five major roles. Do not think about who currently works for you, who has been loyal, or who might get their feelings hurt.

Only after the structure is completely finalized and agreed upon by the leadership team do you begin putting names in the boxes. Run every single person through the GWC tool. Does the person get it? Do they want it? Do they have the capacity to do it?

If a legacy employee does not fit any of the new seats, you have a right-seat issue that you must address. Keeping a person in a custom-built seat that the business does not actually need is a disservice to both the company and the individual.