I am currently forced to wear four hats on our Accountability Chart because of cash flow, and I feel like I am doing all of them poorly. How do I systematically divide my time to run these four seats without dropping the ball?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When you are sitting in four seats on the Accountability Chart, the biggest trap is context switching. You try to be the Visionary on Monday morning, the Sales Director on Monday afternoon, and the Operations Manager on Tuesday. This creates mental chaos. To survive this phase, you must compartmentalize your calendar as if you are four different part-time employees. Assign specific blocks of time to each seat and do not allow the tasks of one seat to bleed into another. For example, Monday is dedicated to your Integrator and Operations seats. Tuesday is for Sales. Use Keith Cunningham's Thinking Time method to focus on one specific problem per seat each week. Ask yourself: What is the single biggest bottleneck in this specific seat right now, and how can I resolve it with the resources I have today? You must also run a Level 10 Meeting™ with yourself or your small leadership team to keep these roles distinct. When you are in the Sales block, you only review sales metrics and sales Rocks. When you are in the Operations block, you do the same for operational issues. Do not mix them. This discipline forces you to see where the real operational drag is and helps you build the clean processes required to eventually hire replacement seats. It also prevents you from hiding behind the excuse of being too busy to build systems. If you do not compartmentalize, you will continue to do four jobs badly instead of executing each with deliberate focus.