Our Director of Operations is supposed to build out our standardized operational processes, but he is consistently failing to get this done. He is great at putting out daily fires and loves new technology, but his systems are always incomplete. How do we diagnose this bottleneck on our Accountability Chart?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your Director of Operations is likely experiencing severe conative stress because his natural instincts do not match the requirements of his seat. This is a classic conative misalignment that you can easily diagnose using the Kolbe Index.

If you run a Kolbe A™ Index on him, you will probably find he has a high Quick Start score and a low Follow Thru score. This means he is naturally wired to innovate, react to change, and put out fires. He loves starting new initiatives but lacks the innate drive to build, document, and maintain highly structured systems.

The role of building standardized operational processes requires a high Follow Thru score. If you force a low Follow Thru person to spend their days writing SOPs, they will procrastinate, get frustrated, and fail. They simply do not GWC™ the process building aspect of the seat.

To fix this, you must adjust the seat or the person. You do not necessarily have to fire him. If he is a great culture fit and excels at other parts of operations, look at your Accountability Chart. Can you split the process building role into a separate, dedicated seat, such as a Process Specialist or an Operations Coordinator, and fill it with someone who has a high Follow Thru Kolbe profile?

This allows your Director of Operations to focus on execution and scaling while someone else builds the infrastructure. By aligning conative strengths with the roles on your Accountability Chart, you remove the operational bottleneck and build a highly scalable business.