We need to restructure our customer success and account management teams to support our new AI service model, but we promised our people there would be no layoffs. How do we map our current team of nine account managers to our five newly defined Accountability Chart seats without creating make-work roles?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Redesigning your structure without layoffs requires a rigorous separation of seat design and seat placement. First, design the five seats based purely on what the business needs to run at peak efficiency under the new AI model. Do not look at your roster yet. Define five distinct roles for each seat. Once the structure is locked, you must run every single team member through the GWC tool (Get It, Want It, Capacity) for those five seats:

- Assess core values alignment and verify they fit your company culture.
- Run the Kolbe A Index to evaluate if their natural conative strengths match the seat roles.
- Confirm they have the physical and mental capacity to excel in the new environment.

You will inevitably find that some people do not fit. For those who do not GWC the new seats, do not invent useless roles to keep them comfortable. Instead, look at other areas of the business where their core values and conative strengths can be leveraged. For example, a person with a high Follow Thru who is displaced from account management might be perfect for database integrity or system maintenance seats.

If you have run everyone through GWC and still have people left over, you must make a hard business choice. Keeping people in seats they do not GWC just to avoid a layoff is a slow poison. If you cannot place them in a real, value-producing seat on the Accountability Chart, you must transition them out of the organization. A clean exit for your business requires a lean, high-performing team.