When you have the right people in the right seats life is beautiful

In my prior article, Right People / Right Seats: Part 1, I made that case that when you have the right people in the right seats life is beautiful. That article focused on getting the right people in place. This article focuses on making sure they’re in the right seats. What follows is based on my 26 years of running companies and proven processes that are part of EOS®, the Entrepreneurial Operating System®.

Job 1: Establish the Right Seats

Defining the right seats is a very important process that many companies take lightly. Creating the optimal structure for your company allows it to grow and flourish. Here are some hallmarks of a good organizational structure, one that contains the right seats:

• Each seat represents a function that is critical to the success of the company
• Each seat, or function, is distinct at the leadership team level. In other words, there is only one seat that owns a function, and it’s occupied by only one person.
• Having distinct seats at the leadership level allows for accountability. It’s clear who owns each function.
• The right seats will be forward looking. Your organization must be built for the future, not the past.

With EOS, we use something called the Accountability Chart to help identify the right seats and to capture the ideal structure. And when we create the Accountability Chart we start at the leadership team level with a focus entirely on what seats are needed. Not who might occupy what seat. A big mistake that I see many teams make is that they create a seat to suit a person. This often has a bad ending because the seat itself was not critical to the company’s success or it overlapped with others.

Once we identify each seat / each function, we then identify the ~5 roles for that function. The roles represent the critical areas of work responsibility for that function. At the leadership team level, one of these roles is what EOS calls “Lead/Manage/Accountability” (LMA). This simply means that the leader of this function has total ownership of the function throughout the organization.

Below is a sample Accountability Chart with roles defined for each seat. It starts with three key functions: Marketing, Operations, and Finance. Above this grouping is a seat we call the Integrator. Their job is to integrate all of the functions and run the business day-to-day. And sometimes, but not always, a company also has a Visionary. This person is an idea person, someone with great vision and insight into where the business is headed.

Your Accountability Chart will be different but this is a good example. Remember, start with the Accountability Chart, then move to identifying the people for each seat.

Job 2: Identify Who Occupies Each Seat

The next step is to place the right person in each seat. EOS uses a methodology called GWC™:

• Gets it: The person really understands the function – it’s part of their DNA.
• Wants it: The person truly wants the seat – it’s something they aspire to do.
• Has Capacity for it: They not only have the time capacity to handle it, but the capacity to do the work from an experience and education perspective.

Below please find an EOS checklist that illustrates GWC in more detail.

To determine who is the right candidate for each seat, utilize the same People Analyzer™ tool that was discussed in my prior article regarding whether someone is right for your organization. But now, add GWC to the columns, right after your core values. This time, your analysis is simply Y (yes) or N (no) for GWC related to the specific seat in question. See the People Analyzer below as an example.

The “Bar” (minimum score) is to have a “Y” for G, W, and C. If someone scores Yes for all three, you have a worthy candidate. If there is a “N” the candidate is typically not considered. The only exception could be if the person scores an N for Capacity, like Maria in the chart. Maria scores really well for exhibiting the company’s Core Values, which means she’s the right person for this company. But she shows an N for Capacity. It’s possible that Maria is simply lacking experience and training, which is what’s keeping her from achieving a Y for Capacity. In this case, the Leadership Team may conclude that Maria is still right for the position and pledges to provide extra training and counsel while she learns the roles of this new function and eventually earns a Yes for Capacity.

Conclusion

Getting the Right People in the Right Seats is absolutely critical. If you use the processes outlined in my two articles on the topic you can be confident that you will achieve this goal.

Todd Thompson is President of Brighton Avenue and a Professional EOS Implementer. Todd’s focus is on business and marketing optimization. Todd focuses on helping companies grow by providing business and marketing consulting services. Todd has held leadership positions in several Fortune 100 companies and has led 6 firms in the last 26 years, participating in multiple successful exits. He can be reached at todd.thompson@brightonavenue.com or 216.496.7013.

Social media:

https://www.eosworldwide.com/todd-thompson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddlthompson/