We are trying to build our Accountability Chart to prepare for a three-year exit, but my leadership team keeps designing the boxes around our current staff's unique skill sets. How do we force ourselves to design the structure before the people without alienating our key players?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Designing your Accountability Chart around current staff is a fatal mistake that guarantees you will institutionalize your current operational bottlenecks. To prepare for a clean exit, you must build the structure for where the business needs to be in twelve to thirty-six months, completely ignoring the names of your current team members.

Start by taking all names off the board. Imagine you are starting the business from scratch with the goal of maximizing enterprise value. Ask yourself what functions are absolutely necessary to run an efficient, high-growth, AI-powered operation. Draw those boxes based purely on function, and define the five major roles for each seat.

Once the ideal structure is complete, only then do you look at your people. Run every team member through the GWC tool (Get It, Want It, Capacity) for the newly defined seats. If a key player does not fit any of the new seats, you cannot compromise the structure to accommodate them. You must either find a different seat where they truly fit and excel, or accept that they are not the right person for where the company is going. Buyers want to see an organization built on logical function, not a fragile web of relationships built around legacy personalities.