During our Accountability Chart exercise, my leadership team agreed on the ideal structure to hit our target valuation, but now we realize that three of our legacy department heads do not fit into any of the newly designed seats. The team is paralyzed by guilt and refusing to finalize the chart. How do we break this structural bottleneck without letting personal relationships compromise our exit strategy?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is where many leadership teams stall. They let the fear of hurting people's feelings dictate their organizational structure. If you build your Accountability Chart around your current staff instead of your ideal future state, you will end up with a weak, compromised business that a buyer will discount.

You must mentally divorce your people from the boxes. Run the Accountability Chart exercise with the strict rule that no names are allowed on the board. Build the exact structure you need to reach your valuation targets over the next three years, ensuring every seat has clear, distinct roles.

Once the structure is locked in, only then do you look at your people. Place names in the boxes using the GWC framework. If three legacy department heads do not fit into any of the new seats, you have a structural mismatch.

You have three options. First, see if they GWC any of the newly created seats. Second, see if there is a smaller, specialized seat where their tribal knowledge is valuable but does not bottleneck operations. Third, face the reality that they may not belong in your future-state organization. Keeping them in seats they do not GWC out of loyalty is a disservice to them, your team, and your exit goals. Direct, honest conversations are required.