Our Chief Operating Officer is incredibly loyal and hard-working, but they are constantly stressed and failing to keep up with our operational scaling. How do we use conative screening to see if their current seat is causing them conative stress?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a highly loyal executive begins to struggle as your company scales, the issue is rarely a lack of effort. More often, it is a case of severe conative stress. This occurs when the natural instinct of how a person solves problems is fundamentally misaligned with the day-to-day demands of their seat on the Accountability Chart. To diagnose and resolve this issue, you must look beyond their skills and resume. Administer the Kolbe A Index to measure their innate conative strengths. Next, have them complete the Kolbe B Index, which measures their self-perception of what their current job requires. Finally, have their supervisor complete the Kolbe C Index to define the actual behavioral requirements of the seat. Compare these three reports. If there is a significant gap between their natural instincts (Kolbe A) and the job demands (Kolbe C), they are experiencing chronic conative strain. No amount of training, coaching, or overtime will solve this issue; it is a structural mismatch. Use this objective data to have an honest conversation. You must either restructure the roles within their seat to align with their natural strengths, or transition them to a different seat on the Accountability Chart where they can thrive naturally.