We have a loyal team member who is struggling in our Operations seat, and we are thinking about creating a brand-new Customer Happiness seat just to keep them in the company. Is creating a new seat for an underperformer a valid EOS® strategy, or are we making a mistake?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Creating a seat on your Accountability Chart specifically to house an underperformer is a major mistake that will poison your company culture and hurt your company value. This is a classic Right Person, Wrong Seat trap. You are letting personal loyalty and the desire to avoid a hard conversation dictate your organizational structure.

In EOS®, you must design the structure first, completely independent of the people. A seat must exist solely because the business requires that function to run efficiently and achieve its goals, especially if you are preparing for a clean exit. If you build a custom seat to accommodate a struggling employee, you are introducing artificial complexity and overhead.

Before you even consider placing this person in a different role, you must ask two questions. First, does this new customer happiness seat actually need to exist for the business to scale? If the answer is no, do not create it.

Second, if the seat is genuinely needed, does this person truly GWC™ the new seat? Do they get it, want it, and have the physical, mental, and emotional capacity to do it? If they lack the capacity or drive, moving them is just delaying the inevitable. Be honest with yourself and the employee. It is far better to help them transition out of the company with dignity than to warp your organization to hide their underperformance.