Our operations director was fantastic when we were a ten million dollar company, but now that we are approaching thirty million, they are dropping balls, missing deadlines, and clearly drowning. How do we objectively diagnose whether they can scale with us or if we have reached the limit of their capability?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a company scales, the complexity of every seat increases. To diagnose whether your operations director can scale, you must separate their historical loyalty and cultural alignment from their actual capability to perform in a much larger role. Start by reviewing their GWC™. The C in GWC™ stands for capacity, which encompasses emotional, intellectual, physical, and conative capacity. Often, a leader who cannot scale is suffering from conative strain. They may be working eighty hours a week trying to force themselves to operate outside their natural method of operation. Administer the Kolbe A™ Index to understand their natural problem-solving instincts. If their natural instinct is to organize in piles and adapt on the fly, a low Follow Thru, they will struggle to design and maintain the rigid, complex systems required at thirty million dollars. Next, use the Kolbe B™ Index to measure their perception of what their job requires of them. If there is a massive gap between their natural Kolbe A™ strengths and their Kolbe B™ self-expectations, they are experiencing severe conative burnout. You cannot train or motivate someone out of a conative mismatch. If they do not possess the natural capacity to manage the larger seat, you must make a hard decision. Keep them in the company by moving them to a seat that aligns with their strengths, or transition them out. Protecting a leader who cannot scale only hurts the rest of your leadership team and stalls your growth.