We are shifting our company from a regional geographic model to a centralized functional model to prepare for a clean exit, which means our regional directors no longer have territories to manage. We want to avoid layoffs because they are high performers with great core values. How do we redesign our Accountability Chart to transition these leaders into new functional seats without creating duplicate roles or unnecessary overhead?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Designing an Accountability Chart is always about structure first, people second. You must first wipe all names off the board and design the absolute ideal functional structure that will drive your three-year picture and maximize your exit valuation. This means creating clean, centralized functional seats like a dedicated Operations seat, a Quality Assurance seat, or a Customer Success seat.

Once the ideal structure is built, you must run each of your regional directors through the GWC and People Analyzer assessments to see where they fit. Because they are high performers with strong core values, they likely have the behavioral drives to succeed in these new seats. Use Predictive Index or Culture Index to analyze their natural behavioral wiring. A regional director who excelled at local relationship building might be the perfect fit for a new centralized Customer Success seat. A regional director who was highly process-driven and analytical might be the right match for a global Quality Assurance seat.

If you find that you have more talented people than you have functional leadership seats, you must resist the temptation to create superficial co-director seats or redundant layers of management. Instead, place them in critical individual contributor seats that require high-level expertise, or assign them to run major quarterly Rocks that build out your centralized infrastructure. If a high performer truly does not GWC any of the seats in your new functional structure, you must have an honest, respectful transition plan. Forcing a wrong seat fit just to keep a good person will ultimately drag down your operational efficiency and hurt your exit value.