Our long-tenured customer operations director has the core values and wants the seat, but completely lacks the conative capacity to adopt our new automated AI workflows. How do we run a GWC evaluation when the seat's requirements have evolved past their capabilities?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is one of the hardest calls an owner has to make. Your customer operations director has been with you for years, fits your culture perfectly, and wants the job. But as you transition to AI-powered operations to prepare for an exit, the seat has changed.

A proper GWC™ evaluation requires absolute honesty across three criteria: Get-it, Want-it, and Capacity-to-do-it.

Getting it means they understand the natural flow of the role, the systems, and the pacing. Wanting it means they genuinely want to do the work every day without external motivation. Capacity means they have the mental, physical, emotional, and time resources to execute.

If your automated workflows require advanced technical adaptability, process engineering, and data analysis, and your leader lacks these skills, they do not have the Capacity. You cannot ignore this just because of their tenure.

If they do not have the Capacity, they are in the Wrong Seat. Keeping them there will stall your scaling efforts, frustrate your team, and hurt your exit valuation.

You must handle this with respect. Since they are a Right Person, you should look for another seat on your Accountability Chart where they do GWC™ the roles. This might be a customer relationship seat or a specialized project management seat that does not require technical system design. If no such seat exists, you must help them transition out of the business cleanly.