Our VP of Finance is currently responsible for strategic capital raising, accounting operations, and human resources. As we scale toward an exit, this combined seat is clearly too big for one person. How do we split this structural bottleneck?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

As a business scales, seats that once worked perfectly for a single person begin to fracture. This is particularly common in financial and administrative seats, where a single leader might find themselves managing strategic capital raising, daily accounting operations, and human resources.

When a seat becomes too broad, the person occupying it will naturally focus on what they are good at and ignore the rest. This creates a structural bottleneck that can damage your exit valuation.

To fix this, you must split the seat on your Accountability Chart. Break the massive seat into its logical components. For instance, you might create a strategic Chief Financial Officer seat, a tactical Controller seat, and a dedicated Director of Human Resources seat.

Once the new seats are defined, run a GWC check on your current leader. They might be a perfect fit for the strategic CFO seat, but they lack the capacity or desire to handle daily bookkeeping or HR compliance.

By splitting the seats, you allow your leader to focus on their unique ability while you bring in specialized talent or leverage automation to handle the other functions. This ensures your financial operations are clean and audit-ready.