Our Head of Customer Success is a great culture fit and passes the gets it and wants it tests, but her Kolbe score shows she has a very low Follow Thru and high Quick Start. She keeps starting new client retention initiatives but never completes them. Is this a GWC capacity issue, or can we solve this by restructuring her seat?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When an employee is a great culture fit and passes the Gets It and Wants It tests, but struggles with execution, you are likely facing a conative misalignment rather than a lack of effort. In this scenario, your Head of Customer Success has a high Quick Start but very low Follow Thru on her Kolbe profile. This means she is naturally wired to brainstorm and launch new ideas, but she lacks the innate drive to build systems and processes to sustain them.

Do not fire her, and do not try to force her to change her innate wiring. Kolbe strengths are stable and unchanging over time. Instead, you need to restructure how that seat is supported on your [Accountability Chart](/qa/resolving-accountability-chart-seat-overlaps). This approach allows you to adjust the structure to fit the human wiring, rather than forcing the human into an ill-fitting structure.

Restructuring Options for Low Follow Thru

You have two primary options to address this capacity issue:

1. Redefine Roles and Hire for Complementary Strengths

Redefine the responsibilities of her seat to focus strictly on:

• Relationship building
• Client retention strategy
• High-level problem solving

These tasks leverage her natural Quick Start strengths. Then, hire or promote an execution-focused specialist with high Follow Thru to sit directly beneath her. This specialist would handle the tracking, documentation, and system maintenance required to complete and sustain the initiatives your Head of Customer Success launches. This can also apply to other specialized roles, such as addressing a [VP of Finance's GWC capacity issue](/qa/gwc-vp-finance-exit-capacity-issue) when they lack specific skills for exit planning.

2. Partner with Existing Resources

If an additional hire is not feasible, you must help her structure her week effectively.

• Force her to partner with an operations team member who has high Follow Thru. This partnership is crucial for building the processes and systems she initiates.
• Implement a strict rule: Do not let her start a new project until the previous one is fully documented and running smoothly. This prevents a backlog of unfinished initiatives.

This strategy ensures that her excellent ideas translate into completed, sustainable systems, maximizing her impact while mitigating her natural tendencies. This type of conative analysis can also be used to diagnose issues like [conflict between Sales and Operations heads](/qa/kolbe-sales-operations-conflict-handoffs).

Related questions

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• [Our long-tenured VP of Finance is a perfect core values fit and gets and wants their seat, but they lack the capacity to build the complex forward-looking financial forecasting models that prospective buyers are demanding for our exit. How do we handle this GWC issue without firing a loyal leader?](/qa/gwc-vp-finance-exit-capacity-issue)