We are designing our Accountability Chart for a clean exit but I keep finding myself drawing seats around my existing management team's current habits instead of what the business actually needs. How do I break this habit and put structure before people?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is the most common trap for business owners. When you build an Accountability Chart around your current people, you permanently codify their personal limitations, bad habits, and inefficiencies into your business model. No buyer will pay top dollar for a customized organizational structure designed to accommodate the quirky preferences of a few legacy managers.

To break this habit, you must mentally fire everyone in the company, including yourself. Start with a completely blank canvas. Ask yourself what the ideal structure must look like to hit your three-year goals and run highly systemized, AI-powered operations. Focus purely on the functions of the business, such as sales, marketing, operations, and finance.

Define the five major roles for each seat without thinking about who will sit there. If a seat requires advanced data analytics or automation management, list that role. Do not water down the role just because your current manager does not know how to use those tools.

Only after the structure is completely finalized and approved by your leadership team do you begin putting names into the seats. If you discover that a long-term employee does not GWC™ the newly defined seat, you have a right-person-right-seat issue to solve. Building the structure first gives you the objective framework you need to address these issues instead of sweeping them under the rug.