My co-founder insists on creating custom seats on our Accountability Chart based on the unique skill sets of our long-term employees, which makes our org structure messy and confusing. How do I convince them to focus on structure before people?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Building your Accountability Chart around people is a fatal trap. It creates a fragile organization where a single resignation can collapse your entire operations. If a seat is designed around a unique individual, you can never replace them, and you cannot scale the business.

To convince your co-founder, you need to have a candid conversation during your next leadership team meeting or during a dedicated Thinking Time session. Use the core EOS principle of structure first, people second.

Explain that you must design the perfect structure to hit your three-year picture on the V/TO, completely forgetting about who currently works for you. This allows you to build a scalable engine.

Once the ideal structure is locked in, you then look at your people and place them in the seats where they fit.

If you have a superstar employee who does not fit perfectly into one of the standard seats, do not bend the structure to accommodate them. Instead, evaluate if they GWC any of the newly defined seats.

If they have a unique skill set that is highly valuable but does not fit a core seat, they might be better suited as an independent contributor reporting to a specific seat, rather than distorting your leadership structure.

Remind your partner that structure before people is what makes the business sellable. An acquirer is buying a systematic, predictable machine, not a collection of highly customized jobs wrapped around individual personalities.