Here’s the takeaway: Hire yourself as a consultant, and begin with structure.
For many organizations, it is not uncommon for customized seats to have been created over time for specific individuals in those seats. Sometimes, this happens because it is the path of least resistance. Other times, individuals have crafted unique positions for themselves by shifting their responsibilities into a custom role that might blur the lines between marketing/sales/leadership/management…the list goes on.
For leadership teams, this type of custom role/seat-crafting can be counterproductive. When businesses can’t move forward, or have hit a ceiling that they can’t seem to bypass, or the executive team feels like they’re spinning their wheels, it’s time to double-check: Do you have the right structure for where you want to go, and do you have the right people for those seats? If you or your people are sitting in customized seats, this may be one of the first opportunities for you to address.
One of my main goals as a Professionally Trained Implementer in Omaha, Nebraska, during this process is to help guide executives and leadership teams away from their customized crushed red-velvet, super-specific chair into a structure, that’s best for the organization. To do this, I ask the team to act as consultants to themselves. This process allows the team to begin create a structure that will be needed for the organization to grow into that next level. To successfully achieve this, it requires tapping the expertise of the leadership team without tapping into egos and preexisting, customized structures.
Hire your team as consultants.
So, let’s pretend that nobody in your company works there anymore Nobody has a job in the organization. When I take companies through the evaluation process, I’ll ask the leadership team to imagine that they’re high-paid consultants for the day. They’ve just strolled off a private jet, and they’ve been brought into a company that looks an awful lot like their company back home. In this “sister” company, these consultants must identify and create the ideal structure of what the company should be. Next, I’ll ask them to define what would the ideal structure look to grow enough to put them where the organization wants to be in the next 12-18 months. When employees no longer have a dog in the fight, so to speak, they can look at this company objectively to see what seats should exist. They are objective and they are experts in this arena. Then, they can build a structure that works best for the organization without any ego involved.
When you have the right structure, next you can begin to figure out if you have the right people sitting in those seats.
In our next post, we will talk about the specific process of how to clarify the roles for each seat. Then, finally we’ll discuss how to fill these seats for each organization.
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