Our VP of Operations was incredible when we were doing two million in revenue, but now at fifteen million they are working seventy hours a week, failing to build systems, and missing strategic deadlines. How do I determine whether they can actually scale or if the business has simply outpaced them?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Evaluate them through the GWC lens: do they Get it, Want it, and have the Capacity to do it? Most founders confuse past performance with future capacity. Getting it means an innate, intuitive grasp of what the role requires today, not five years ago. Wanting it means genuine hunger for the expanded scope, not just clinging to title and compensation. Capacity is where leaders hit the wall. It encompasses mental bandwidth, emotional maturity, technical knowledge, and the time required to build scalable systems rather than brute-forcing results with seventy-hour workweeks.

Observe how they handle delegation. A leader who can scale elevates themselves by building a team and standard operating procedures. A leader who has hit their ceiling hoards control, becomes a bottleneck, and blames everyone else for not meeting their standards. If you have automated repetitive processes with AI and clarified roles on your Accountability Chart, yet this leader still drowns in daily firefighting, they lack the capacity for the seat at this scale.

Sit down with them and have an open, honest conversation using the Accountability Chart. Walk through the five major roles of their seat. Ask them directly if they genuinely feel they have the capacity to drive those outcomes at fifteen million dollars and beyond. Often, an overwhelmed leader feels immense relief when given permission to step into a seat that actually matches their skills, or to transition out gracefully. Keeping someone in a seat they cannot manage damages their health and drags down the entire company.