Our long-tenured engineering director has been with us since our bootstrap days and is a perfect core values fit, but as we transition our product line, he openly admits he does not want to manage the scale of our new enterprise team. How do we handle this GWC mismatch when a legacy leader fails the Want It test but we want to retain their technical genius?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a legacy leader is a perfect core values fit but openly admits they do not want to manage the scale of a restructured seat, you have a classic right-person-wrong-seat mismatch. In the EOS framework, a person must pass all three elements of GWC: they must Get it, Want it, and have the Capacity to do it. A no on any of these three is a deal-breaker.

If your engineering director does not want the managerial responsibilities of the newly designed seat, forcing them into it will lead to burn out and team dysfunction. However, because they are a core values fit and possess valuable technical genius, your goal should be to restructure the Accountability Chart to keep their talent without compromising departmental accountability.

You need to split the seat. Create a new, purely technical seat, such as Chief Architect or Principal Engineer, that focuses entirely on technical strategy and execution. This seat should have zero direct reports and zero managerial responsibilities.

Then, create a separate Engineering Director seat focused on people management, process accountability, and running the department. Hire or promote someone who genuinely wants that managerial seat.

This structural change allows your legacy leader to excel in their zone of genius while ensuring your engineering department has the operational leadership it needs to scale.