Do I need to hire someone, or just decide who owns it?
Most of the time you do not need a hire. Someone is already doing the work. What is missing is the seat around it: nobody has written down what that area owns, what the person in it can decide alone, and what good looks like. Until that exists, the work keeps coming back to you.
The work and the seat are two different things
The work is the doing: the proposals written, the jobs delivered, the invoices raised. The seat is the ownership around it: what that area is accountable for, which decisions belong to it, what numbers it is judged on, and what happens when those numbers move the wrong way. A business can have all of the work covered and none of the seats defined.
That is the common case, and it is why adding people rarely fixes it. You hire someone capable, they do the work well, and six months later every decision about their area still arrives at your desk. Nothing was wrong with the hire. There was no seat for them to sit in.
Three versions of the same symptom
Everything comes back to you. The cause is one of three things, and the right move is different in each.
Shared, unowned
Two or three people half-cover the same ground.
Everyone is helpful and nobody is accountable. Work falls between them, and the gap gets filled by you. The move is to assign it, to one named person, in writing.
Done, undefined
One person does all of it, and still asks you about everything.
They have the work. They do not have the authority, the numbers, or a clear line on what they can settle alone. The move is to define the seat around the person already in it.
Genuinely empty
Nobody is doing the work at all.
There is no-one to assign it to and no-one to define it around. The move is a hire, and you want the seat drawn before the advert goes out, not after.
Only the third is a recruitment problem. In my experience it is the least common of the three, and it is also the one most founders assume they have.
What a seat actually contains
A seat is not a job title. It is four things written down, which is the same four things the Firm Foundation Framework installs across the business, applied to one area:
The numbers it owns
Two or three figures that tell you whether this area is healthy, visible before month end rather than after it. See Financial Visibility.
What it can decide alone
A written limit. Spend up to this, discount to that, hire within this band, without asking. See Decision Authority.
When it reports and to whom
A standing slot where those numbers get looked at and decisions get made rather than noted. See Leadership Rhythm.
What it is on the hook for
One name against each outcome that matters, so nothing important is owned by the group. See Accountability Design.
Write those four down for one area and you have a seat. The person in it stops asking, because the answer is already written.
Why filling it from inside usually wins
If someone is already doing the work, they know the clients, the quirks and where the bodies are buried. What they lack is permission and a definition, and both of those can be written in a fortnight. A new hire has neither, plus six months of learning the business, plus the risk that they turn out to be wrong for it.
The objection I hear is that the person is not senior enough to own the area. Sometimes that is true. More often they have never been told what owning it would mean, so nobody has any evidence either way. Give them the four things above, a number and a weekly review, and you will know inside a quarter. That is faster and cheaper than a recruitment round, and if the answer is no you have lost a quarter rather than a year.
Growing someone into the seat is also the only version that makes the business less dependent on a single person rather than more. A hire you have to manage closely is another thing on your desk.
When to call a recruiter, and when to call me
Call a recruiter when there is genuinely nobody doing the work and you need hands. That is a capacity problem and recruiters are good at it.
Call me when the work is being done and it still comes back to you. That is a structure problem. I define the seats, install the four pillars inside them, and develop the people holding them until they can run and move their area without checking. Where a hire is genuinely needed, I will tell you that too, and I would rather say it on the first call than four weeks in.
The embedded engagement and the advisory engagement both start the same way: four weeks working out which of the three cases above you actually have, for each area, before anything gets built.
Frequently asked questions
How do I tell whether the seat is unowned or undefined?
Ask who you would ring if that area went wrong tomorrow. If you name two or more people, it is unowned. If you name one person immediately but they still check decisions with you, it is defined badly or not at all. If you cannot name anyone, the seat is genuinely empty.
What if the person doing the work does not want the seat?
Some people want the craft and not the ownership, and that is a legitimate answer. Ask them directly before you promote them into something they will resent. If they decline, the area still needs an owner, and that is the case where a hire is justified.
Can one person hold two seats?
In a smaller business, yes, and often they must. The risk is that the two blur back together and neither gets looked at. Keep the numbers, limits and review for each one separate even when the same person holds both, so you can hand one over later without untangling it.
Does this mean I should never hire?
No. It means you should know which of the three cases you have before you spend £60,000 finding out. A hire into an undefined seat usually reproduces the problem with a more expensive person in it.
How long does defining a seat take?
The writing takes days. Making it stick takes a quarter, because the real work is the weekly habit of sending decisions back to the person whose limit covers them, including when it is faster to answer yourself.
Not sure which of the three you have?
A 30-minute Operational Clarity Call, which is a direct read of where the business stands. If the answer is that you need a hire rather than me, I will say so.
Book an Operational Clarity Call →