My long-term operations director has been with me since inception and has held every role. As we scale toward our exit, we need to transition to a highly structured Accountability Chart, but he does not fit cleanly into any single seat. I am tempted to create a custom hybrid seat that matches his unique skill set. How do I resist this urge and enforce structure before people when it feels like I am pushing out a loyal partner?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Creating a custom hybrid seat to accommodate a loyal employee is one of the most common mistakes founders make, and it always backfires. It creates a bottleneck, confuses the rest of the team, and significantly lowers the value of your business in the eyes of prospective buyers who want to see a clean, scalable structure.

You must commit to the EOS® principle of structure before people. Start by drawing the ideal Accountability Chart that your business needs to hit its 3-Year Picture and prepare for an exit, completely ignoring the names of your current team members.

Define the operations seat exactly as it needs to run today. This seat likely requires advanced systems integration and data-driven scaling. Once the ideal structure is complete, look at your long-term operations director and evaluate him against this seat using GWC™.

If he does not GWC™ this newly defined operations seat, you have a right-person, wrong-seat situation. Because he is a perfect core values fit and has deep historical knowledge, look at the other vacant seats on your new Accountability Chart.

Perhaps there is a high-value customer success, partner management, or technical advisor seat where his skills are a perfect match. If a matching seat exists and he GWC™s it, transition him there.

If no such seat exists, or if he refuses to relinquish the operational leadership title, you must make the difficult choice to help him transition out of the company. Protecting one individual at the expense of the organization's health violates your commitment to the greater good of the business.