Musical Chairs

By David Saxe BBA, CPA, CA CBC – Certified Ownership Thinking and EOS Implementer

As a Business Performance specialist, I work primarily with business owners, CEO’s and leadership teams because the culture of an organization has to flow from the top down. If the leadership team can’t define and follow the desired culture, there is nothing for the rest of the organization to follow.  This will inevitably lead to people issues.

Dealing with People Issues in Your organization

In two previous articles, I wrote about how to change the culture of your organization and how to ensure that this change is followed by all.  This is what I call “the right people.”  In this article, I want to focus on “the right seats.”

Many organizations hit the ceiling and can’t seem to grow beyond a certain point.  They tend to have outgrown their own corporate structure.  This is the time when the leadership teams needs to take a step back and re-examine their specific structure.  To be effective, the process must not only define the hierarchy of the organization, who reports to whom and what positions are actually needed to take the company to the next level,  but it should also define the responsibilities of each position.  By defining the responsibilities, you define what each person needs to do and therefore what their qualifications and skillsets need to be.  This goes a long way towards define the job description for each position in the organization.  The resulting document is called an Accountability Chart as it defines which people are needed, what their responsibilities are, who they report to and what skills are needed, all on one chart.

An extremely important point to consider when developing the Accountability Chart is to avoid or delay inserting the names of existing employees in the appropriate box.  You need to define the purpose and function of the seat before you decide who will fill it.  Once the Accountability Chart is developed, then you can slot the right person in the right seat.  This is the time when you often find out that the reason for the lack of progress or growth of the organization is because several people may not be in the right seat for the job they are performing.  Over time and as a company grows, the responsibilities of that job may outgrow the employee who has filled that position for years or the employee may not be qualified for that position.

As you insert the names of the current employees into the right seat for their skills, you will find that a few, or even more than a few, may not fit in any seat.  This is when the tough job of re-training or terminating that employee becomes necessary for the continued growth and success of the company.  New, qualified employees need to be hired, based on the defined core values and the skills needed to fill those vacant seats.

Once this process is completed, you will have the right structure, the right people in the right seats, doing the right jobs.  You’ll be amazed at how quickly your organization starts to achieve its objectives.

David Saxe, BBA, CPA, CA, CBC

Business Performance Specialist

Authorized Partner – The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™

Certified Ownership Thinking™ Facilitator

Base Camp Trained EOS implementer

David has over 40 years of hands on business and business related work experience and is the Senior Associate of Next Level Business Planning.  The firm provides leadership teams with the tools, training and skills to build high performance, cohesive and productive teams within their businesses organizations.  David has a passion for working with leadership teams to help them create a laser-focused vision and provide the tools, training and traction to achieve that vision.   He also helps to create a culture of engagement and accountability to maximize efficiency and profitability by training employees to think and act like owners.  David can be reached at david@nextlevelbusinessplanning.com.