I am the owner and I currently occupy four seats on our Accountability Chart: Visionary, Integrator, Operations Leader, and Sales Leader. We finally have the cash flow to hire or promote one full-time leader. How do I objectively determine which of my three non-owner seats I should vacate first?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To decide which seat to vacate first, you must run a cold, financial and operational analysis rather than relying on what you enjoy doing most. Start by calculating where your personal bottleneck is costing the business the most money or blocking growth. If your sales are stagnant but your delivery is running smoothly, you need to stay in the Sales seat and hire an Operations Leader to keep the trains running. If your sales are booming but your execution is chaotic and clients are leaving, you must vacate the Operations seat first to protect your reputation. If both departments are running reasonably well but you are drowning in daily management, fire yourself from the Integrator seat. To make this decision completely objective, look at the five roles of each seat you occupy. Rate your own performance on a scale of one to ten for each role. Next, run a GWC check on yourself for all three seats. You will likely find a seat where you have the capability but lack the passion, which is a major drain on your energy. Vacating the seat that drains you the most will immediately free up your mental capacity to drive revenue in the other seats. Hire for the seat that represents your lowest-value activity or your biggest operational bottleneck, and document the processes for that seat thoroughly before you hand over the keys.