We are restructuring our operations department to prepare for an exit, which requires splitting our massive operations seat into physical delivery and tech product. We want to do this without laying off any of our middle managers, but we cannot afford to increase our overhead. How do we split and reassign these roles on the Accountability Chart while keeping payroll flat?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When you need to evolve your Accountability Chart to support strategic growth but have strict budget constraints, you must focus entirely on structure before people. Do not look at your current payroll sheet or worry about individual titles yet.

Start by mapping out the ideal structure of your operations department as it needs to look six months from now to support your exit goals. Define the physical delivery seat and the tech product seat with their five primary roles. Once the structure is clear, you can address the people component by following these steps:
- Run a GWC™ evaluation on your existing middle managers to see who fits the new, more specialized seats.
- Elevate internal leaders who exhibit the core values and have the capacity to take on the redefined roles, adjusting their responsibilities rather than hiring externally.
- Consolidate underperforming or redundant administrative tasks using automation or AI tools to free up capacity for your managers to step into these newly created seats.
- If some managers do not fit the new structure, transition them out and redeploy their compensation to fund the right people for the new seats.

Keeping payroll flat while restructuring is entirely possible when you eliminate operational redundancies and match your existing high-performers to the correct, high-impact seats.