Write The Seat

Very recently, I was sitting with an owner in Minneapolis, MN, going over his org/ accountability chart. This was about a 4-year-old company with a projected revenue of 3.1 million this year, in 2026.

We got to his mitigation project manager. I asked him what that seat was responsible for.

He told me about Kevin.

He told me Kevin was great with homeowners, calm, and that he didn't love paperwork, so the owner or someone else usually handled it. When I asked again what the seat itself owned, he started to answer, stopped, and said: "I suppose just the client onboarding and keeping the budget."

That was the whole problem in 4 minutes.

Most of the roles I see in owners' companies were grown over time around whoever showed up. Somebody good comes along, the owner hands them what they're good at, and quietly takes back the rest. A few years later, the job description describes one person.

It feels like good management while you're doing it. You're playing to strengths; you're keeping a good person happy.

And for a while... it works.

Then the results stop showing up, and nobody can say why. Everyone else's workload goes up, and covering for Kevin is hurting other things. The owner is frustrated with the PM. The PM is frustrated because he's doing the job he was given. Both of them are right; neither of them ever created the seat and then moved into it.

You yourself might have one of these right now. The office manager who also does collections because she's good on the phone, so nobody checks whether collections is actually getting done. The lead tech who runs the jobs he likes and passes the rest back to you or just rushes through them.

When the role is built around the person, there's nothing to hold anyone to. Every hard conversation turns into a conversation about personality, and those are the ones owners put off, especially with younger teams who take criticism hard. It's the "we'll figure out the job later" hire.

Write the seat the way the company needs it today, then hold the person to it.

I'm not saying the person in the seat is the problem. Sometimes they're the best thing you've got, and writing it down shows you how much they've been missing. Sometimes it shows you the gap was yours.

So here's what I'm asking my clients to do over the next two weeks, and you can do it too. Take your mitigation PM seat and write one page on what it owns right now. Write the version you need today. The bigger-company version can wait; if you don't fix it now, you'll never get to where you want to go.

Then notice where writing it made you see things. That's usually where the real work is.

After that comes the conversation with the person in the seat: define it, hold them to it, then coach them up or coach them out. I have a way I walk owners through that conversation. I'll show you if you ever like.

A seat written clean is kind to the person in it. They finally know what winning looks like, AND your customers get the same job no matter who shows up.

That owner in Minneapolis has until Oct. 2 to send me his page. It's for him and his mit PM

Right now the seat still has his PM's name on it. I'm hoping they both get to see what it was always supposed to be.

-KB

That's exactly how our business mentoring and coaching is oriented. It's the mission, and we have really gotten good at it. Want to explore? Reach out at www.restorationadvisers.com.