Our VP of Operations has been with us for ten years and is a beloved cultural champion, but as we have scaled, they are clearly struggling to manage our now fifty-person team. They get and want the seat, but how do we objectively evaluate their capacity when their failure is about leadership scale rather than technical skill?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is one of the hardest calls an owner has to make. Your legacy leader has the core values, gets the seat, and wants the seat, but capacity is not just about technical knowledge. It is also about the mental, physical, and emotional capacity to lead at a larger scale.

Managing five people requires a completely different skillset than managing fifty. To evaluate their capacity objectively, look at the measurable outcomes of their seat. Are their direct reports hitting their numbers, or is there constant turnover and firefighting? Are they successfully executing their Rocks, or are they consistently rolling them over to the next quarter?

Use the GWC™ tool with absolute honesty. Capacity means having the time, intelligence, and emotional maturity to handle the complexity of the seat today and in the future. If your VP of Operations is consistently overwhelmed, working eighty hours a week, and unable to think strategically, they do not have the capacity for this seat at this stage of your growth.

Do not let sentimentality cloud your judgment. Keeping someone in a seat they cannot handle is unfair to them and damaging to the business. You must have a candid conversation. You can either restructure the Accountability Chart to create a different seat that fits their current capacity, or transition them out of the organization entirely. Making this hard right person right seat call is necessary to protect the business and prepare it for a clean exit.