Stop Building Your Structure Around the People You Already Have

Insights from the coaching room

Most established businesses I work with have an organisation chart.

Some have a very neat one.

Boxes, lines, job titles. Everyone knows where they sit.

But when I ask a simple question, the room usually goes quiet.

"If this business were twice the size, what would the structure look like?"

Not who would be in it.

What it would look like.

And in my experience, very few owners have ever drawn that picture.

Instead, the structure they have today has grown up around the people they hired along the way.

That works for a while.

Then it quietly starts to hold the business back.

How Most Structures Really Get Built

I don't think anyone sets out to design a muddled structure.

It happens one sensible decision at a time.

Someone good joins early and picks up whatever needs doing.

Over time, their role becomes "whatever they're good at".

Someone else gets promoted because they've been loyal and capable, so a box is created for them.

A gap appears, so a role is invented to fill it.

A manager leaves, and their responsibilities get shared out between whoever has a bit of capacity.

Each of those decisions made sense at the time.

But add them together over ten or fifteen years and you end up with a structure that describes the past.

Not one that's designed for the future.

The Symptoms Are Easy to Spot

When the structure has been built around people rather than the business, the same things tend to show up.

• Two managers who both think they own the same thing
• Important work that nobody really owns at all
• Job titles that sound senior, but come with very little authority
• A new manager who has been appointed, but nobody has told them what they can actually decide
• People reporting to whoever they've always reported to, regardless of what makes sense now
• The owner's name sitting, unofficially, in half the boxes

That last one matters most.

Because when the structure is unclear, everything defaults back to the owner.

Not because the owner wants it to.

Because nobody else is quite sure it's theirs.

Titles Are Not the Same as Authority

This is one of the most common things I see in the coaching room.

A business promotes someone into a management role.

They get a new title. Possibly a pay rise. Maybe a team.

But nobody sits down and agrees what the role is actually responsible for.

Or what decisions it can make without checking.

Or how its success will be measured.

So the new manager does what most sensible people would do.

They play it safe.

They check before they decide.

They escalate anything that feels slightly risky.

And the owner, a few months later, says something like this:

"I gave them the job. Why won't they just get on with it?"

The honest answer is often that they were given a title.

They weren't given a role.

Design the Structure First. Then Add the Names.

I think one of the most useful things an owner can do is separate two questions that usually get mixed together.

The first question is:

"What structure does this business need to deliver the plan?"

The second question is:

"Who do we have, and where do they fit?"

Most businesses start with the second question.

They look at the people they have and arrange the boxes around them.

That feels kind. It feels practical.

But it means the structure is limited by the team you have today, rather than shaped by where you're trying to get to.

When you answer the first question first, things become much clearer.

You draw the structure based on functions and responsibilities. Sales. Operations. Finance. Customer service. Whatever your business needs.

No names. Just roles.

Then, and only then, you start putting names in the boxes.

Some people fit perfectly.

Some roles have nobody in them yet.

Some people are currently doing two or three jobs.

And some boxes have the owner's name in them when they really shouldn't.

That's not a problem.

That's a plan.

Every Role Needs Three Things

When I work with management teams on structure, I find it helps to keep each role simple.

Every senior role should be clear on three things.

What it owns

Not a long list of tasks.

The outcomes the role is responsible for.

"Sarah owns on-time delivery."

"James owns gross margin on projects."

If two people think they own the same outcome, nobody really owns it.

What it decides

This is the bit most businesses skip.

Which decisions can this person make on their own?

Which do they make and then tell someone?

Which genuinely need to come to the owner or the board?

Without that clarity, people either overstep and get pulled back, or under-step and wait to be told.

Both are frustrating.

Both slow the business down.

How it is measured

What does good look like in this role?

Which two or three numbers tell you whether it's working?

If you can't answer that, it's very hard to hold anyone accountable.

And it's even harder for them to hold themselves accountable.

"But I Can't Just Restructure Everyone"

When I raise this with owners, the concern is usually the same.

"I don't want to upset people."

"Some of my team have been with me for years."

"What if someone doesn't fit the new structure?"

These are fair concerns.

But I'd gently suggest that leaving things unclear isn't kinder.

People generally want to know what's expected of them.

They want to know what they're responsible for, and what they're not.

They want to know how they'll be judged.

Ambiguity feels comfortable for a while. Over time it creates frustration, overlap and quiet resentment.

And it's worth saying that designing the future structure doesn't mean changing everything on Monday morning.

It means knowing where you're heading.

You can then move towards it deliberately, over months, as people develop, roles open up and the business grows.

The Owner Is in the Structure Too

This is the part that's easy to overlook.

When you draw the future structure, you need to draw yourself into it.

Not as "the person who does everything that's left over".

As a defined role, with its own responsibilities.

In most of the businesses I work with, the owner's role should eventually be focused on a small number of things. Direction. Key relationships. Developing the senior team. Holding them to account.

If your name is still in the operations box, the sales box and the finance box, the structure isn't finished.

And growth will keep depending on you.

A Practical Exercise

Here's something I'd encourage you to try with your senior team.

It takes a couple of hours and it's usually very revealing.

Step one. On a blank sheet, draw the structure your business would need if it were twice its current size. Functions and roles only. No names.

Step two. For each senior role, write one line on what it owns, one line on the key decisions it can make, and the two or three numbers it's measured on.

Step three. Now add the names. Put each person where they genuinely fit today.

Step four. Look at what you've got and ask:

• Which boxes are empty?
• Which people appear in more than one box?
• Where does my own name appear, and should it?
• Which roles have a title but no clear decision-making authority?

Step five. Pick the one change that would make the biggest difference over the next 90 days. Agree it. Put an owner and a date against it.

You won't fix everything in one go.

You don't need to.

But you'll have a picture of where you're going, and that changes the quality of every people decision you make from here.

A Simple Test

If you want a quicker version, try this.

Write down ten decisions that come up regularly in your business.

Pricing a non-standard job. Approving overtime. Choosing a supplier. Handling an unhappy customer. Recruiting into a team.

For each one, write down who makes that decision today.

Then write down who should make it.

If your name appears more often in the first column than the second, that's your structure talking.

Final Thought

Most businesses don't outgrow their people.

They outgrow their structure.

The structure that got you here was built around the team you had, the gaps you needed to fill and the decisions you were making along the way.

That's normal.

But it was never designed for the business you're trying to become.

So it's worth stepping back and asking a different question.

Not "where do my people fit?"

But "what does this business need?"

Design that first.

Be clear about what each role owns, decides and is measured on.

Then help your people grow into it.

Because the right structure won't make your managers capable on its own.

But the wrong one will stop even the best of them from leading.