We are reorganizing our client delivery from regional geographic silos into customer-segment pods, which eliminates two regional director positions without reducing overall headcount. How do we repurpose those displaced managers into legitimate seats on the Accountability Chart without creating redundant, make-work layers?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Redesign the structure for pure operational efficiency before you even consider where those two directors land. If your new pod structure requires pod leads, senior client engagement managers, or dedicated technical QA leads, define those seats with five clear roles and distinct Scorecard measurables.

Once the ideal future structure is locked, evaluate both individuals against the open seats using the People Analyzer. Do they embody your Core Values, and do they have the GWC (Get It, Want It, Capacity to do it) for the new seats?

If they possess deep client relationships and technical acumen, they may excel as pod leaders or enterprise account strategists. However, you must avoid the trap of inventing an advisory seat or a co-director layer simply to preserve their prior status. An artificial seat creates organizational drag, confuses reporting lines, and adds payroll overhead that erodes gross margins.

If legitimate open seats exist within the pod model and they pass GWC, place them there with unambiguous accountability. If they do not fit any legitimate seat on the updated Accountability Chart, you must be honest with them. Keeping high-salary personnel in artificial seats out of sentimentality weakens the entire business and telegraphs to the rest of the company that accountability is negotiable.