I am the owner and I will have to sit in four different seats on our Accountability Chart for at least the next year due to cash flow constraints. How do I design these seats objectively without letting my personal biases and operational weaknesses warp the job descriptions?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The biggest mistake owners make when wearing multiple hats is writing seat roles based on what they like to do or what they are good at. If you write the job descriptions to fit your personal strengths and weaknesses, you create Frankenstein seats that are impossible to fill when you are finally ready to delegate them. To avoid this trap, you must decouple your identity from the seats on your Accountability Chart. When you are designing the structure, you must act as if you are building the company for someone else to buy. Design each of the four seats as if you were going to hire a professional, highly skilled specialist for each one tomorrow. Define the five key roles for the Visionary seat, the Integrator seat, and whatever departmental seats you are holding. Write them with absolute clarity, outlining what success looks like for each distinct function. Once the seats are defined, you must physically place your name in all four boxes. When you work inside each seat, you must mentally switch hats. If you are in the finance seat, you must act with the discipline of a CFO, even if you hate spreadsheets. By keeping the seats structurally pure, you preserve the integrity of the chart. This makes it incredibly clear what you are actually looking for when cash flow improves and you are ready to hand over a seat to a new hire.