We are pivoting our business model to focus purely on high-margin enterprise accounts, which means we need to eliminate several mid-level manager seats. How do we redesign the Accountability Chart based purely on this new strategic direction without letting our personal loyalty to these managers cloud our structural decisions?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Redesigning your Accountability Chart during a strategic pivot requires absolute discipline. The core rule of the Accountability Chart is structure before people. You must design the organization to support your new strategic direction, entirely detached from the individuals currently on your payroll.

To do this, start with a blank sheet of paper. Do not look at your current chart or think about your current team members. Based on your new enterprise-focused V/TO, define the exact seats, roles, and responsibilities required to acquire, deliver, and support enterprise clients. Focus on what the business needs to scale over the next three years.

Only after you have finalized this future-state structure do you begin looking at your people. Run a GWC evaluation on each team member against the new seats. You may find that some of your loyal managers do not get, want, or have the capacity for the new, enterprise-level roles.

This is where personal loyalty must be balanced with professional honesty. Keeping people in seats they do not GWC out of loyalty is actually disloyal to them and to the rest of the company. It guarantees they will struggle and eventually fail, while bottlenecking your company's growth. If a loyal employee does not fit a seat in the new structure, you must either find another open seat that they GWC, or help them transition out of the business with dignity. This clean operational discipline is exactly what sophisticated buyers look for during due diligence.