My business partner's brother holds the Head of Procurement seat on our Accountability Chart, but he clearly lacks the capacity to manage our growing supply chain and vendor negotiations. How do we navigate a Right Person, Right Seat issue when family dynamics make addressing GWC feel dangerous?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Family relationships do not grant immunity from the laws of operational accountability. When an underperforming family member occupies a vital seat, it poisons company culture. High-performing employees notice the double standard immediately, which destroys trust and encourages mediocrity across the leadership team.

You must remove emotion and evaluate this strictly through EOS tools.

Start with the People Analyzer. Evaluate whether he is a Right Person by rating him against your Core Values. Then evaluate Right Seat using GWC: does he Get it, does he Want it, and does he have the Capacity to do it? In this scenario, he lacks the technical, emotional, or intellectual capacity to negotiate complex supply contracts at your current scale.

Next, the business partners must align in private. The partner who is related to the individual must take the lead in separating family loyalty from organizational health. The framing is simple: the business has evolved, and the requirements of the seat have outgrown his current abilities. Keeping someone in a seat where they are failing is not a kindness; it creates chronic stress for them and endangers the enterprise.

Identify if there is an alternative seat where he genuinely matches the Core Values and satisfies GWC, perhaps as an individual contributor in vendor relations or inventory tracking. If no such seat exists, you must transition him out of the company with dignity and fair severance. Never keep the wrong person in a critical seat to keep peace at Thanksgiving.