I am promoting our top Operations Manager to the Integrator seat so I can focus on being the Visionary, but she wants to keep managing our top three client accounts because she is afraid of losing touch with the business. How do we represent this on our Accountability Chart without compromising the Integrator seat?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The short answer is you do not. The Integrator seat is a full-time, high-level leadership role responsible for running the daily operations, executing the business plan, and holding the leadership team accountable. Combining this with hands-on account management is a recipe for operational failure. If your new Integrator is spending twenty hours a week managing client accounts, she does not have the capacity to manage your leadership team, drive strategic alignment, or prepare the business for an exit.

On the EOS Accountability Chart, we must define the ideal structure first, independent of the people. The Integrator seat must be clean. Create a separate Account Management or Client Success seat underneath the Sales and Marketing function. Put your new Integrator's name in both seats temporarily if you must, but make it highly visible that she is wearing two hats. This is a capacity issue that you must IDS in your weekly Level 10 Meeting.

Set a clear, dated goal to transition those client accounts to another team member. Your goal is to get her name out of the account management seat entirely within ninety days. This clear separation on the chart prevents her from defaulting back to comfortable client work when the difficult, high-conflict work of being an Integrator gets tough. It also shows potential buyers that your business is run by scalable systems, not by executive-level key-person relationships.