We have a brilliant operations director who has the raw intelligence and the desire to run our manufacturing plant, but she is currently overwhelmed by a severe personal crisis that has dragged on for six months. She gets it and wants it, but her personal life is destroying her physical and emotional capacity to perform. How do we make a Right Seat, Right Person decision when the capacity issue is temporary but open-ended?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When someone checks the boxes for Get It and Want It but struggles with Capacity, it is the hardest GWC call an owner has to make. This is especially true when the capacity issue is caused by a temporary but open-ended personal crisis. You want to support your loyal operations director, but you cannot allow your manufacturing plant to suffer.

Capacity is not just about physical hours or technical skill. It is also about emotional and mental bandwidth. If her personal crisis is preventing her from running the plant effectively, she currently does not have the capacity for her seat. You cannot ignore this. You must address it with empathy but absolute clarity.

Start by having an honest, private conversation. Do not wait for the quarterly review. State the objective facts about her performance and the impact on the business. Ask her directly if she feels she has the mental space to succeed in her seat right now.

If the issue is temporary, look for a short-term structural solution. Can you temporarily reallocate some of her roles to other seats for a defined period, say thirty or sixty days? If you do this, you must update the Accountability Chart to reflect the temporary change so everyone knows who is accountable for what.

If the crisis is open-ended and performance does not improve after sixty days, you must make a permanent seat change. You can move her to a lower-capacity seat with less stress, or help her transition out of the business. You can love the person and still protect the seat.