We have had an empty Operations Manager seat on our Accountability Chart for four months, and our Integrator has been absorbing the workload. She is now completely burned out, and our quarterly Rocks are slipping. How do we manage an empty seat without destroying our remaining leadership team?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a seat is empty, the work does not magically disappear, but burying your Integrator is a recipe for disaster. You must make a conscious decision about how to handle the empty seat roles. Do not just let them default to the Integrator.

Look at the roles of the empty seat and decide which are absolutely critical to keep the business running and which can be temporarily paused. For the critical roles, delegate them explicitly among other team members as temporary seats on the Accountability Chart, ensuring they have the capacity to absorb them.

If no one has the capacity, you must hire temporary, contract, or fractional help to bridge the gap. Use Keith Cunningham's concept of distinguishing a problem from a predicament: an empty seat is a problem with solutions, but burnout is a predicament you must actively manage.

Do not let your team sacrifice their long-term effectiveness for short-term firefighting. Sit down with your Integrator, list out the tasks, and ruthlessly prioritize what must get done and what can wait until the seat is filled.