We have a leadership team member who insists on keeping their title of Vice President, but their actual seat on the Accountability Chart has been scaled down to a director level as we prepare for an exit. How do we handle this ego battle over titles?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In an organization running on EOS®, titles are meaningless. Only seats on the Accountability Chart™ matter. As you prepare your company for a clean exit, you must structure the organization for maximum efficiency and clarity, not to appease individual egos. A potential buyer wants to see a clean, functional organizational structure where every seat has clear roles and responsibilities. Having a bloated hierarchy with inflated titles just to keep people happy is a red flag.

Sit down with this team member and explain the philosophy of the Accountability Chart™. In EOS®, we design the structure of the company first, and then we place the right people in the right seats. The roles and responsibilities of their seat must dictate their focus, not a legacy title.

Explain that holding onto an outdated title creates confusion for the rest of the organization and complicates reporting lines. If they are a Right Person for your company, they must live your Core Values, which should include humility and putting the organization first. If they cannot look past their title to focus on executing their Rocks and driving the business forward, you have a deeper alignment issue that must be addressed using the People Analyzer™.