I promoted our top project manager to the Integrator seat two years ago because he knew the business inside out. He gets and wants the seat, but as we prepare for a major private equity exit, he lacks the capacity to manage institutional investor diligence and complex financial reporting. How do we address this Right Person, Wrong Seat reality on the leadership team?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a classic Right Person, Wrong Seat scenario on the leadership team. Your Integrator has excellent core values and knows your daily operations, but the seat has outgrown him. Running daily projects is vastly different from managing institutional due diligence, aligning financial systems for an exit, and keeping a fast-growing leadership team accountable.

An Integrator must GWC the seat. While he gets it and wants it, he lacks the capacity for this level of scale. If you keep him in this seat during an exit process, the friction will show. Buyers will see a bottleneck in leadership, and your deal could fall apart during due diligence.

You must make the hard call. Have a transparent conversation. Explain that the company needs a different set of skills in the Integrator seat to navigate the upcoming transaction and the next phase of growth.

Do not fire him if he is a Right Person who shares your core values. Instead, find a seat that matches his true capabilities. He might be the perfect VP of Operations or Head of Project Delivery, reporting to a new, experienced Integrator. This moves him to a seat where he can win, clears the bottleneck on your leadership team, and positions your company for a successful, high-value transaction.