Our long-tenured VP of Operations works relentless hours and wants the job, but as we scaled past twenty million dollars, it is obvious they do not Get It when it comes to high-level capacity planning and enterprise technology. How do we handle an unambiguous Gets It failure on someone who has fifteen years of equity and sweat in the business?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A failure in the G of GWC™ is the hardest issue an owner faces, especially with a loyal veteran. The G stands for Gets It. It represents natural wiring, aptitude, and an innate grasp of how the seat operates at the company's current scale. You can train skills, and you can provide resources to support capacity, but you cannot train natural wiring.

Your business at five million dollars required an operational scrapper who solved problems with brute force and personal relationships. At twenty million dollars, your Operations seat requires systems architecture, automated resource forecasting, and rigorous process discipline. Your veteran did not become a worse employee. The seat simply evolved beyond their natural ceiling.

You must have an open, unsentimental conversation outside the Level 10 Meeting™. Lay out the five roles of the current Operations seat on the Accountability Chart and point out where the gaps are. Be explicit that while their dedication and core values alignment are beyond question, the mental model required for this specific seat at this revenue tier is not a fit.

Do not invent a meaningless VP of Special Projects seat to soften the blow. That ruins organizational clarity and creates cultural resentment. Determine whether there is an actual, legitimate seat on the chart that they genuinely Get, Want, and have the Capacity to do, such as a specialized field execution or key accounts seat. If no true seat exists, you must help them exit the business with dignity and generous severance. Keeping someone in a seat they do not get destroys enterprise value and damages the person holding it.