Due to a sudden industry downturn, we need to temporarily merge our Marketing and Customer Experience seats under one leader to save costs. How do we document this consolidated seat on our Accountability Chart without losing the distinct focus of both roles?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Merging seats during a downturn is a pragmatic move to preserve cash flow, but you must be incredibly disciplined in how you represent this on your Accountability Chart to avoid operational confusion. The most dangerous mistake is blending the roles into a single, vague seat.

On your Accountability Chart, you must keep the Marketing seat and the Customer Experience seat completely separate. Do not combine them into a single box. Instead, you will have one person's name in both seats.

This distinction is critical because it reminds the leader that they are wearing two different hats with two distinct sets of accountabilities. When they are in a Level 10 Meeting™ or working on Rocks, they must consciously decide which seat they are operating in.

Each seat must retain its five clear, measurable roles. For Marketing, the roles might focus on lead generation and brand awareness. For Customer Experience, the roles must focus on client retention and Net Promoter Scores.

During your weekly review, the leader must report on the metrics for both seats independently. If they start neglecting the marketing roles because customer issues are shouting louder, the Accountability Chart will make this gap instantly visible.

Keeping the seats separate also ensures that when the market recovers or your cash flow improves, you can easily split the seats again and hire a dedicated leader for one of them without having to redesign your entire organizational structure.