… And for any new readers, welcome to Signal // Noise — the newsletter read by CEOs, founders, & scrappy builders every Thursday. Each week, what I’m listening to, one deep dive, notes from the field, three links worth your time. No buzz, no bullshit.

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From sound to signal—let’s get this baby rolling with what’s on my mind this week…

Most founders don't sit down and design an org chart.

They build it the way you furnish your first apartment. You grab what's available, what's affordable, what's right in front of you. A freelancer here. A generalist there. Someone who "can probably handle this."

And over time, you end up with a bunch of function-adjacent roles.

You don’t notice it at first. It feels logical. You hire when something breaks. You fill gaps as they show up. Totally reasonable.

But it’s also how you end up with a company where the core functions aren’t actually owned.

In the early days, you're small. Everyone does everything. Your first marketing person is also doing customer success and maybe a little sales ops because, welp, that’s what needs to get done.

Ain’t nothing wrong with that.

But things start to go a bit sideways when the company grows, and continues to grow, but the roles don’t, and the org design doesn’t, either.

You go from 5 people to 15. Then 15 to 30. And instead of stopping to define what each seat actually is, you just keep bolting on responsibilities to whoever happens to be around.

It's like renovating a house by just adding rooms without ever looking at the blueprint. Eventually the plumbing doesn't reach the bathroom and the electrical is a fire hazard.

(hopefully that makes sense, I’m not a mechanical sort of guy).

Here’s how this shows up:

Two people think they own the same thing. Something important slips, and everyone thought someone else had it. Your best person is doing three jobs and can’t tell if they’re winning or drowning.

Then you go to hire.

And the job description is vague… because the job itself is vague.

So you attract people who are pretty good at a lot of things, but not great at the specific thing you actually need.

Not because they’re not talented.

Because you never defined the seat.

Capable people. Unclear seats.

That’s the real cost.

Here's what I've come to realize, both for myself and with founders I work with: you do have an org chart. It just lives in your head.

You know who handles what. You know the unspoken rules. You know Sarah runs the big client stuff and Mike is the ops guy. It's all mapped out up there, and it works, because you're sitting in the middle of everything acting as the human router.

But nobody else can see that map.

So people step on each other. Decisions get stuck because nobody knows who owns them. Your best people start burning out because they're doing three jobs that were never formally one, let alone three.

And when you finally go to hire? The job description is vague because the role itself was never clearly defined. You're asking someone to come fill a shape that doesn't have edges.

Good luck attracting an A-player for that.

There's a distinction that I think is really useful here, and I borrowed it from Lex Sisney who writes about org design.

A role is a formally defined function with clear accountability. Someone owns it. It's their thing.

A hat is a temporary responsibility that someone wears because there's nobody else to wear it yet.

In a startup, everyone wears hats. That's fine. The problem is when a hat becomes the role, and nobody ever stops to ask: should this actually be its own seat? With its own scope? Its own success metrics?

Most people skip that question. They just keep handing out hats until someone's head can't hold them all anymore.

If any of this sounds familiar, here's a simple exercise. It's not fancy. It takes maybe an hour.

Step 1: List every function happening in your company right now. Not job titles. Functions. Sales. Marketing. Customer success. Product. Engineering. Finance. Ops.

Step 2: Under each function, write who's actually doing the work. You'll probably notice some names appearing under three or four different functions. That's your first red flag.

Step 3: For each function, ask yourself: if I were hiring for this today, with no constraints, what would the job description look like? Not who you have. What you need.

Step 4: Compare what you need to what you have. That gap? That's your actual org chart problem. Not a people problem. A design problem.

None of this is complicated. But it does require you to stop and look at something you've probably been avoiding. The org chart in your head got you here. It won't get you to the next stage. At some point you have to name the seats, define the jobs, and be honest about the gap between what you have and what you actually need. Otherwise you just keep handing out hats and hoping it all holds together.

I broke down my 3H Leadership Framework on Nick Berry's podcast this week: high expectations, high support, high transparency. Most companies lean hard one direction or the other. This is about why they don't have to be mutually exclusive. Check it out here.

My friend Rob Litterst sat down with Clay's head of monetization to get the real story behind their big pricing overhaul, from credits to actions. If you've ever thought about restructuring your own pricing, this is a thorough analysis of how to think through it. Check it out here.

Duncan manages $2 billion and Josh Waitzkin calls him the best in the world at reading human potential. This one's all about how to actually evaluate people, not resumes. Given this week's Signal, the timing felt right. Check it out here.

Something I wrote, about slowing down, letter writing, and trying to be present with my kids when everything's screaming to move faster. Not a business post, just a bit of normal life. Check it out here.

Lastly — but not least — if you’re trying to keep up with AI without losing your mind, this one’s worth a look. Claude just rolled out “Dispatch,” which lets you assign tasks to it from anywhere. Has already made an impact. I’ve been playing with it here.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

And until next time, thanks for reading.

Jordan