Our long-tenured VP of Engineering gets and wants his seat, but with our upcoming exit preparation, he lacks the mental and temporal capacity to handle both daily operations and the intense due diligence requests. How do we address this specific capacity issue on the Accountability Chart?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a classic capacity issue under the GWC™ filter. Your VP of Engineering gets and wants the seat, but capacity is not just about intelligence or work ethic. It is about hours in the day, physical stamina, and mental bandwidth. Exit preparation adds a massive layer of complex, urgent work on top of running a department. If he tries to do both, both your product and your due diligence will suffer.

You cannot ignore this. A buyer looking at your business will quickly identify a stressed, overloaded key leader as a major risk. To solve this, you need to adjust the structure of your Accountability Chart to temporarily or permanently offload some of his roles.

Look at his current seat and identify the five core roles. Typically, an engineering lead handles both long-term product strategy and daily operational management. To free up his capacity for exit-ready documentation, tech audits, and buyer meetings, you must delegate the daily operational management roles.

Create a temporary or permanent sub-seat beneath him, such as a Director of Engineering Operations. Move the daily execution and project management roles into this new seat, and place a highly capable manager in it.

This restructuring allows your VP of Engineering to retain his seat while delegating the daily grind. He gains the critical capacity required to focus on the exit process, and your buyers see a highly structured, scalable department that does not rely entirely on one overloaded executive.