Every time my leadership team sits down to update our Accountability Chart, the conversation devolves into protecting our friends' jobs and designing roles around our current staff. How do we force ourselves to put structure before people?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a common trap that keeps businesses stagnant. To break this habit, you must implement a strict rule during your quarterly and annual sessions: you are not allowed to use any names when designing the Accountability Chart. You are only allowed to discuss seats, roles, and accountabilities.

Start with a completely blank whiteboard. Imagine your business has zero employees and you are building it from scratch to reach your three-year target. Ask yourself what seats must exist to run this organization at that scale. For each seat, define the five major roles that seat must perform to be successful.

Only when the entire leadership team agrees that this blank-slate structure is perfect for the business do you bring names back into the room. At that point, you run every team member through the GWC filter for the new seats. You will immediately see where you have gaps, where you have people in the wrong seats, and where you need to hire.

By separating the structural design from the people who currently occupy the seats, you remove the emotion and politics from the process. Your duty as a leadership team is to the health of the company first. If you build the structure around the current capabilities of your staff, you will simply lock in your current limitations and fail to scale or prepare for a clean exit. Trust the tool, keep names off the board until the structure is locked, and solve the people issues through IDS.