We have a highly competent leadership team, but several members are wearing multiple hats and constantly step on each other's toes during Level 10 Meetings because we have not clearly separated the seats from the personalities. How do we run a clean restructuring?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The fundamental rule of the Accountability Chart is that we design the structure first for the next twelve months of growth, completely ignoring the people we currently have. Only after the seats and their five bulleted roles are perfectly defined do we look at our people and place them in the seats they GWC™.

When you design around personalities, you create overlapping accountability, which leads to confusion, turf wars, and dropped balls. To run a clean restructuring, take your team through a whiteboarding session. Erase all names from the board. Look at your V/TO® and ask what seats are required to hit our revenue and operational targets. Define each seat with absolute clarity, ensuring there is only one owner for every seat. If a leader must temporarily wear two hats, their name goes into two separate seats on the chart. During your Level 10 Meetings™, they must consciously speak from the seat of the issue being discussed. This visual and mental separation eliminates political posturing and clarifies who is accountable for what. By structuring the business this way, you remove the personal emotional baggage and focus purely on what is best for the organization.