We designed our target three year Accountability Chart, but we have five critical leadership seats that are currently empty. If we put our current team's names in those empty boxes temporarily, we will burn them out. How do we manage the gap between our current team and our future structure?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Designing a forward-looking Accountability Chart for your three year picture is essential, but it often leaves you with several empty seats. If you try to fill all these seats immediately, you will destroy your cash flow. If you expect your current team to absorb all the extra work indefinitely, you will burn them out.

To manage this gap, you must use a phased implementation plan. First, identify which empty seat is the most critical bottleneck preventing your growth. Focus on filling that single seat first, either by promoting from within or hiring externally.

For the remaining empty seats, you must temporarily assign them as dual-seats to existing leadership team members. This means their name goes into both boxes on the Accountability Chart. However, they must treat these as separate seats with distinct roles and separate Rocks. They must allocate specific blocks of time to each seat rather than letting them blur together.

Review these dual-seats during your quarterly meetings. Use your Scorecard to monitor if the extra workload is impacting their core performance. As the business scales and cash flow allows, systematically hire to fill the next most critical seat. This step by step approach ensures you build the target structure without overwhelming your team or risking your financial stability.