It is important initially and periodically to define the seats without the names or even the existing positions in your organization. How would you design it if you were not constrained by what is? The key word is accountability - what are the outputs required for each seat to meet the business goal. Be clear first about what needs to be accomplished by your organization. Then work backwards to figure out the sub-outputs that get you those results. Divide and organize those sub-outputs into seats. Only then can you fill the seats with people that can produce those results for... (More)

Yes, it is helpful to build out a current state AC and a future state AC. 

Hey, @Andrew McCutchen153 congrats on starting this journey. It's a game changer.

Your starting point for the A/C is that you have three major functions: sales/mktg, ops, and finance/admin.

It's very common for some of these functions to be split into multiple boxes -- sales/mktg can turn into a sales seat and a marketing seat, finance/admin is often split into several, and in cases like yours where you have distinct lines of business the ops seat can be split (into engineering services, contract manufacturing, and staffing).

So splitting seats is very common, but combining the distinct functions into a single... (More)