What happens during our session days if we run into a situation where a co-founder or long-term partner does not GWC their seat, but they have significant equity or emotional ties to the company?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is one of the hardest, most emotional situations a leadership team can face, but we handle it with direct, unsentimental clarity. When a co founder or long term partner does not GWC™ their seat: meaning they do not Get it, Want it, or have the Capacity to do it: we cannot ignore it. Doing so violates our core commitment to organizational health.

During our sessions, we use the Accountability Chart to separate the owner role from the operational seat. Having equity in the business does not automatically qualify someone to run a major operational department. We filter every seat decision through our core values and the GWC™ framework, focusing purely on what the business needs to scale.

If a partner is struggling in their seat, we start with open, honest, and loving communication, mirroring back their behavior and performance against the expectations of the seat. If they do not align or lack the capacity to scale with the company, we must practice our rule to hire slow and fire fast.

This does not mean throwing your partner out of the business entirely. It means moving them out of an operational seat where they are bottlenecking growth, and transitioning them to a role where they can add real value: or moving them exclusively into the Owners Box as a shareholder. Protecting the health of the company requires us to make these difficult structural choices, and I will facilitate those tough conversations during our session days.