Our Chief Creative Officer has been with us since day one, but as we scale, the seat now requires managing complex digital asset pipelines and high-volume media workflows. He gets the seat and wants the seat, but his capacity is completely lacking. How do we make this tough call?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Long-tenured leaders are often the soul of a business, but sentimentality cannot dictate your structure. In the EOS framework, GWC is binary. If any of the three letters is a no, the person is in the wrong seat. In this scenario, your Chief Creative Officer understands the creative vision (Gets It) and is motivated to lead (Wants It), but lacks the technical capability or time to run modern asset pipelines (Capacity).

First, verify if the capacity issue is about time or talent. If it is purely about time, you can delegate subordinate tasks to other team members. However, if the issue is talent, meaning he lacks the skills to manage the digital workflow, you have a Right-Person-Wrong-Seat issue.

You must have an open and honest conversation. Leverage the Trust pillar of your company charter. Explain that the requirements of the seat have grown beyond his current capacity. Do not let the business suffer out of loyalty. Your options are to train him quickly with strict milestones, or transition him to a specialist creative seat where his genius can shine without the operational management burden. If he cannot accept a role change, you must part ways. To prepare for a clean exit, buyers need to see that every seat on your Accountability Chart is filled by someone who fully GWCs their role.