Our Finance Director is working seventy hours a week and insists she understands and wants her seat, but her monthly reporting is consistently late and full of errors. How do we objectively diagnose whether this is purely a capacity issue we can solve with a junior hire or if she simply does not GWC the seat?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To resolve whether your Finance Director is facing a capacity issue or a GWC issue, you must look at her performance objectively and separate her work volume from her natural abilities.

Start with the GWC framework. Does she truly Get it? This means she intuitively understands the finance seat, the flow of numbers, and how her work impacts the business. Does she Want it? This means she is genuinely motivated by the daily financial work and leadership responsibilities. Does she have the Capacity? This refers to her mental, physical, and emotional resources, as well as her available time.

If she consistently produces late and error-filled reports despite working seventy hours a week, she may have the drive but lack the cognitive or systems-building capacity required for an elevated leadership seat. This is especially true if your business is scaling and financial operations are becoming more complex.

To diagnose this, temporarily remove some of her lower-value administrative tasks by hiring a part-time bookkeeper or automating invoice reconciliation. If her reporting accuracy and timing do not improve once her workload is reduced, you are dealing with a GWC issue, not a capacity bottleneck. She may be a great person, but she is in the wrong seat, and you must make the tough call to find a leader who can handle the complexity.