I am currently sitting in four major seats on our Accountability Chart, including Visionary and Head of Operations. We are heading into our annual planning session, and my leadership team says we cannot set realistic corporate Rocks because my multi-seat presence makes our actual capacity a complete wildcard. How do we plan quarterly goals when I am wearing so many hats?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your team is absolutely right. When you occupy four major seats, your capacity is not just a wildcard, it is a bottleneck that paralyzes the entire organization. If you try to set Rocks as if you are a full-time Visionary, a full-time operations leader, and a full-time salesperson, you will fail to achieve any of them, and your team will suffer from your lack of execution. To plan effectively, you must compartmentalize your capacity during the planning session. For every seat you occupy, you must treat yourself as a separate, fractional resource. When the team is debating Rocks, you must explicitly state which seat you are speaking from. More importantly, you cannot take on more than your fair share of Rocks. A healthy leadership team member typically takes on one to three Rocks per quarter. If you sit in four seats, you do not get to take on twelve Rocks. In fact, you should take on fewer. Your primary Rock for the upcoming quarter must be to delegate yourself out of at least one of those seats. Identify the seat that is easiest to hand off, document the core processes using the Step by Step Exit approach, and make finding or training your replacement your main priority. Until you systematically vacate those seats, your company will remain stuck, and your exit readiness will be zero. Plan your quarterly Rocks around your exit path from those seats, not by pretending you have superhuman capacity.