Our Head of Operations is trying to add three new sub-seats under his department on our Accountability Chart, arguing that we need a more complex structure to look mature to potential buyers. I suspect he is just trying to build a mini-empire. How do we distinguish between necessary structural growth and seat inflation?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Buyers do not pay a premium for complexity; they pay a premium for simplicity, efficiency, and high margins. Adding unnecessary seats to your Accountability Chart to make your organization look mature actually does the opposite. It signals to a sophisticated buyer that your business is bloated, overstaffed, and likely suffers from slow decision-making and high overhead. To test whether a proposed seat is truly necessary, you must apply the rule of simplicity. Every seat on your chart must exist to solve a specific, ongoing business problem or own a core function that directly drives your vision. Ask your Head of Operations to define the exact, measurable numbers that these three new seats will be accountable for on your Scorecard. If those metrics are already being hit, or if they can be managed by optimizing your current processes or integrating basic automation, then the seats are redundant. You must also look at your current capacity. Are the existing seats genuinely overflowing with work, or is this an issue of poor time management? Run an IDS session on this during your next leadership meeting. Force your team to defend every single box on the chart based on the work that needs to be done, not the status of the manager leading it. Keep your chart as lean as possible. A clean, high-performing, simplified structure is infinitely more attractive to a buyer than a complex hierarchy.