One of our early employees is currently sitting in three critical seats: Head of Logistics, Purchasing, and Quality Control. He is a great core values fit and loves having his hands in everything, but he is becoming a major operational bottleneck. He is resisting our attempts to take two of those seats away from him because he feels like he is being demoted. How do we handle this transition?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a classic founder-era bottleneck. Your early employee is suffering from the hero mentality. He derives his self-worth and security from being indispensable in multiple departments. However, as you scale toward a clean exit, having one person hold multiple critical seats is a massive risk that buyers will spot immediately. It creates severe key-person dependency and limits your operational capacity.

You must frame this transition as an elevation, not a demotion. Use the concept of Delegate and Elevate. Sit down with him and explain that to get the business to the next level, you need him to focus his unique talents on the one seat where he can make the biggest impact.

Run a GWC evaluation on all three seats with him. Determine which single seat he gets, wants, and has the absolute highest capacity to run. Once you identify his true seat, explain that by delegating the other two seats to new or existing team members, he will actually free up his time to dominate his core area. Emphasize that holding multiple seats is actually holding the company back from growing.

If he still resists, you must IDS this issue on your leadership Level 10 Meeting. A great core values fit must ultimately put the needs of the business before their own ego.