Most people problems are structure problems. Ando breaks down why the seat has to be designed before you judge who is sitting in it, and how ghost seats quietly cost small businesses the most.
Draw your organisation chart right now, on paper, today. Not the one you would draw for a bank. The real one, with every task your business actually needs, and who is doing each one. Half the time there is not one. Most owners are running a business nobody has ever mapped.
That is the real problem behind right people in the right seats. Most people problems are structure problems wearing a person's face. You do not have a hiring problem. You have a seat problem, and you found the person before you designed the seat.
It means the seat comes first. Decide what the role needs to achieve, what decisions it owns, and what it does not, before you think about who sits in it. An org chart with your name in six boxes is not embarrassing, it is clarifying. It shows you exactly where the business depends on you, and that is the map you need before you can hand any of it off.
A ghost seat is work that someone in your business is quietly doing, without it ever being named as their job. It sits between two roles, or falls to whoever notices first. Nobody designed it, so nobody owns it properly, and it usually surfaces during a crisis, when the person doing it is away and everyone realises how much was resting on them.
Name the seat. Write down what it actually covers. A seat that exists on paper can be trained, backed up, and eventually handed to someone else. A seat that only exists in someone's head cannot.
Once the seat is clear, you hire for attitude, because the seat defines the skills and you can train those. You cannot train character. I have watched an owner nearly let go of their most loyal employee because that person was doing a job the business no longer needed, in a seat that was never redesigned as the business grew. The employee was fine. The seat was wrong.
Fix the seat and the right person is often already standing in it.
Draw the real chart. Find the ghost seats. Redesign the seat before you judge the person in it. This single sequence, done properly, solves more people problems than another round of interviews ever will.
It means designing what a role needs to achieve before deciding who should fill it. Most owners hire first and design the seat later, which is why the same people problems keep recurring under different names.
A capable person doing poor work is often in the wrong seat rather than a bad hire. Redesign the seat around what the business now needs before assuming the person is the problem.
A ghost seat is real work being done in a business that was never formally assigned to a role. It usually surfaces when the person doing it is away, and everyone discovers how much depended on them.
Attitude. A clearly designed seat tells you exactly which skills are needed, and skills can be trained. Character cannot.
Anderson Chong, Founder of iQuest Consulting and Business by Design
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