Our Operations Director has been with us for 14 years and bleeds our core values, but as we have scaled, it is clear he no longer Gets how to orchestrate high-velocity supply chain operations. How do we address a clear Does Not Get It call on a beloved, long-tenured leader?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A lack of 'Get It' is the hardest GWC call to make, especially on a loyal leader who helped build the company. 'Get It' is neurological. It represents an innate, natural understanding of how a seat works and how the pieces connect. You can train capacity through education, and you can influence want through alignment, but you cannot teach someone to get it. When a business scales, the complexity of a seat changes, and people who understood the seat at five million dollars often do not understand it at twenty million dollars.

Do not allow sentimentality to paralyze your leadership team. When an operational leader does not get their seat, the department suffers from constant rework, bottlenecks, and missed deadlines. The rest of the organization ends up covering for their blind spots.

Handle the situation directly using this framework:
- Use the People Analyzer privately. Sit down with the leader one-on-one. Walk through the five roles of their seat on the Accountability Chart. Discuss specific, non-emotional examples where operational complexity exposed a gap in their intuitive grasp of the role.
- Stop hoping for an epiphany. If a leader has not grasped the strategic requirements of their seat after six months of direct coaching, they never will. Keeping them in the seat is unfair to them, damaging to the team, and dangerous for enterprise value.
- Evaluate alternative seats. Since they are a Right Person who lives your core values, explore whether there is a seat where their natural wiring aligns. If that seat exists and provides genuine value, transition them. If no such seat exists, help them exit with dignity, gratitude, and a fair severance package.