Is Your Org Chart Fueling Growth or Frustration?
If your company is experiencing missed deadlines, siloed teams, a lack of trust, or even a toxic culture, the root cause may not be strategy, talent, or market conditions, it might be your organizational structure.
It might be your Accountability Chart.
At first glance, an org chart seems like a simple admin document. Just names in boxes. But when it’s done right, your Accountability Chart becomes the foundation of a high-performance company: aligned, focused, and built to scale. When it’s done wrong, or worse, when it’s outdated or non-existent, it becomes a silent saboteur.
The Hidden Cost of a Broken Org Structure
Most companies don’t realize they’re structured for yesterday’s version of their business. They’ve bolted on roles as they’ve grown, assigned titles based on tenure instead of fit, and let people define their jobs instead of designing the right seats first.
What does this look like day-to-day?
- Deadlines are missed because no one knows who owns what.
- Decisions stall because it’s unclear who’s accountable.
- Star players get burned out trying to cover multiple unclear roles.
- Culture erodes because trust breaks down in the chaos.
Sound familiar?
Structure First. People Second.
The first step to clarity is defining the right structure — not around people, not around titles — but around what the business needs to thrive.
In all the Business Operating Systems out there like EOS, Ninety or System & Soul, we start by mapping the Core Functions every healthy business needs. From there, we design Seats with clearly defined responsibilities, outcomes, and KPIs — long before we decide who sits where.
This “structure first” approach does two critical things:
- It forces clarity about what your business actually needs to execute your vision.
- It breaks the emotional trap of designing your business around legacy roles or loyalty instead of logic.
Right Person. Right Seat.
Once you have the right structure, you can focus on getting the right people into the right seats. We evaluate this using three filters that we coined CCC:
- Competency: Do they have the skills and experience?
- Commitment: Do they genuinely want the role?
- Capacity: Do they have the mental, physical, and emotional bandwidth?
A great culture starts with clarity. And it scales when everyone knows their role, owns their outcomes, and fits the seat they’re in.
So What Can You Do?
If you’re unsure whether your structure is helping or hurting, ask yourself:
- Are we crystal clear on who is accountable for what?
- Do we have any team members who are the right person in the wrong seat?
- Are we hiring and promoting based on Core Values, CCC, and accountability — or on convenience and history?
Then, revisit your org chart with these Three Disciplines for a Healthy Accountability Chart in mind:
- Each Core Function must be strong.
Weakness in any Core Function (e.g., Sales, Ops, Finance) shows up fast — in missed goals, customer complaints, or internal confusion. Every function needs strength, clarity, and leadership. - Only one person can be accountable for each Core Function.
Shared accountability often means no accountability. While one person can own multiple functions, no single function should have more than one owner. When something breaks, we need to know exactly who to go to. - Every leader must be one level higher in capability than their subordinates.
Leaders need to be able to provide context, coach, and lead. If they’re operating at the same level as their team — or worse, below — the function will stagnate, and so will your people.
Want to turn confusion into clarity?
Let’s talk. I’d love to hear about your org structure and share a few tools that might help.