During our Accountability Chart exercise, we realized our legacy department heads have titles and responsibilities that do not match our future structure, and now the room is filled with tension. How do we navigate the personal emotional fallout when restructuring roles during our first implementation sessions?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Restructuring your Accountability Chart during your initial EOS sessions always brings emotional tension to the surface. Legacy department heads often associate their personal worth with their job titles and the number of people reporting to them, which leads to defensiveness when you begin defining lean, outcome-based seats.

To handle this fallout, you must establish a ground rule before the session begins: we are designing the ideal structure to take this business to the next level, regardless of our current staff. You must separate the seats from the people.

Map out the seats, functions, and roles objectively. Once the ideal structure is defined, you then evaluate who fits into each seat using the GWC tool.

If a long-time employee no longer fits their current seat, or if their seat is split into two, do not avoid the conversation to protect their feelings. Address the mismatch with humble confidence. Explain that the business has outgrown its current structure and that they need to be in a seat where they can truly excel and add value. Frame the changes around the long-term growth of the company and their own professional alignment. Avoiding these structural adjustments because of personal discomfort only prolongs organizational dysfunction and hinders your scale.