Our veteran operations manager works 70 hours a week and fiercely wants her seat, but she does not get how to build scalable processes or manage through leadership metrics. How do we handle a GWC deficit when a loyal leader has Want and physical work capacity but lacks the Get?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Working 70 hours a week is frequently evidence that a leader does not get the seat, not proof of exceptional performance. When a leader lacks the Get, they compensate by using brute force, micromanagement, and sheer physical endurance to hold department operations together. They survive by memory rather than building scalable systems.

In EOS, GWC is binary. Every letter must be a clear yes. If Get is a no, the person is in the Wrong Seat. Getting a seat means understanding the role intuitively and conceptually at the scale the business requires today, not how it ran five years ago. You cannot train or motivate someone into getting a seat if their natural wiring does not match the complexity of modern operational systems.

Address this directly using the People Analyzer. Schedule a private meeting outside the Level 10 Meeting. Review the five core roles of the operations seat on the Accountability Chart: LMA, process architecture, resource scheduling, capacity forecasting, and scorecard metrics. Walk through specific operational bottlenecks where the lack of systems creation is hurting the business.

Give them thirty to sixty days to demonstrate systemic thinking, supported by coaching. If they still cannot operate at a conceptual, managerial level, remove them from that leadership seat. Because this leader has strong core values and dedicated work ethic, identify whether a specialized technical seat exists on your Accountability Chart, such as a field superintendent or senior project lead, where her grit and domain knowledge add direct value without stalling the rest of the company.