Our long-tenured VP of Operations has been with us since the beginning, but as we scale and integrate automated workflows, he is struggling to manage our modern, tech-driven supply chain. He has the core values and wants the seat, but he does not truly get the data-driven requirements of the modern role. How do we handle this GWC issue?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a classic Right Person, Wrong Seat scenario, and it is one of the hardest calls an owner has to make. Your long-tenured leader has the core values, meaning he is the right person. He wants the seat, but he does not get it. To get a seat, an individual must have a natural, intuitive feel for the role and its responsibilities. If your business has scaled from a manual operation to a highly automated, data-driven supply chain, the seat itself has fundamentally changed. The seat he used to occupy no longer exists on your modern Accountability Chart.

You cannot force a person to get a role through brute-force training if they lack the natural capability for high-level technical or analytical oversight. Keeping him in this seat will bottleneck your growth, frustrate your team, and ultimately hurt your valuation when buyers conduct operational due diligence.

To resolve this, you must separate the person from the seat. Design your ideal future organizational structure on the Accountability Chart without names. Define the new Operations seat with roles focused on automation, data integrity, and systems scaling. Once the seat is defined, evaluate him objectively using the GWC tool.

If he does not get it, you must move him out of that seat. Because he is a right person, search your Accountability Chart for a different seat where he truly gets, wants, and has the capacity to succeed. This might be a specialized vendor relations or quality assurance role. If no such seat exists, you must make the hard, professional decision to transition him out of the company to protect both his dignity and the future of the business.