Our operations have scaled to twenty field crews, and our Director of Operations is drowning trying to manage daily job-site execution while negotiating material procurement and vendor pricing. How do we decide when and how to split Operations into distinct seats on the Accountability Chart?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a single operational leader is buried under immediate tactical brushfires, high-leverage strategic responsibilities always get neglected. A Director of Operations who spends ten hours a day managing field crews will inevitably miss supplier price creep, inventory bottlenecks, and vendor contract negotiations.

To decide whether to split the seat, conduct an honest audit of your Accountability Chart against your three-year picture.

Look at your weekly scorecard. Are gross margins shrinking because nobody is actively renegotiating vendor contracts? Are field delivery dates slipping because materials arrive late? If your operations leader is constantly choosing between dispatching technicians and managing global supply chains, you have overloaded a single seat.

Do not split seats by personality. Split them by distinct operational functions. Keep Field Operations focused on execution, job-site safety, labor productivity, and customer delivery. Create a separate seat for Supply Chain and Procurement focused on vendor management, inventory turnover, logistics, and material cost controls.

Both seats should report directly to your Integrator. Before hiring or promoting, define the five primary roles for each seat. Validate that each seat has its own measurable on the weekly scorecard. By splitting the seat cleanly, you remove the operational bottleneck and give field execution and supply chain management the dedicated focus they require to scale profitably.