Our Head of Finance also handles our HR and IT vendor management, but we are growing too fast for one person to wear all three hats. When we split these into separate seats, how do we determine which roles she keeps and which ones we must immediately hire for?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You must evaluate this leader using the GWC™ tool for all three functions separately. Do not look at her as one multi-talented person; look at the seats on your Accountability Chart.

First, list out the roles for the Finance seat, the HR seat, and the IT seat. Sit down with her and run the GWC™ test for each box. She may want to keep all three, but she simply does not have the capacity to do them all well at your current scale. Capacity is almost always the breaking point for Swiss Army Knife leaders.

To determine her final seat, ask her where her greatest passion and skill lie. Usually, a finance professional wants to focus on financial strategy, cash flow management, and analysis. If she gets, wants, and has the capacity for the Finance seat, let her own that box completely.

Once her primary seat is secured, the HR and IT seats become vacant on your Accountability Chart. Because these are critical support functions, you must assess your budget to see if you can hire full-time leaders or if you should engage fractional experts. In many mid-market companies, hiring a fractional HR Director and an outsourced managed IT service provider is the fastest way to fill these seats with high-level talent without bloating your payroll.