As our multi-location veterinary practice expands to eight clinics, our physical facility repairs, lease negotiations, and medical equipment servicing are falling through the cracks, but neither our Clinic Directors nor our Operations Director wants the Facilities seat. How do we place and staff this seat when nobody on the leadership team wants it?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When an operational function lacks a natural home, leadership teams often divide the responsibilities across existing leaders. That approach guarantees neglected maintenance, blown repair budgets, and zero accountability.

Start by defining the true seat on your Accountability Chart beneath Operations or the Integrator. Define the five core roles that govern the function:
- Managing preventative maintenance and repair for clinical equipment
- Overseeing facility vendor contracts, leases, and utility services
- Resolving emergency facility and structural issues
- Coordinating new clinic buildouts and physical renovations
- Ensuring municipal, fire, and facility compliance standards

Next, recognize that forcing an existing leader to take this seat when they do not Want it will produce substandard results. If a leader has Get and Capacity but lacks Want, they will treat facility tickets as annoying chores, ignoring them until an air conditioning unit fails or an autoclave breaks down during surgery.

The permanent solution is to staff the seat with someone who genuinely wants the accountability. Depending on your revenue and scale, this can be an internal Facilities Coordinator or an outsourced commercial property management firm that sits squarely in the box.

Until you recruit or contract the right person, your Integrator must place their own name into the seat. Holding the seat keeps the financial and operational friction visible on the leadership team scorecard. It forces the Integrator to solve the resourcing gap quickly rather than letting clinic facilities deteriorate.