Our long-tenured Head of Operations gets our culture and wants her seat, but as we have scaled, the operational complexity has skyrocketed. She is working eighty hours a week but is still bottlenecking the team. She insists she has the capacity if she just works harder, but we are hurting. How do we make this Right Seat call?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your Head of Operations is suffering from a classic capacity blindspot. Because she is loyal and wants to succeed, she is trying to solve a systemic capacity problem with sheer brute force. Working eighty hours a week is not a badge of honor. It is a sign of a failing seat design or a mismatch in capability.

You must have a candid, data-driven conversation about GWC. Explain that Capacity is not just about hours in the day. It is about the emotional, mental, and physical bandwidth to lead, manage, and hold people accountable at your current scale.

Look at her seat on the Accountability Chart. Is she trying to do the work of three seats? If so, you need to delegate and elevate. Identify the tasks that are draining her time and move them to other seats, or create new support seats. If she resists delegating because she wants to control everything, then she actually lacks the capacity to lead a modern department.

If you restructure the seat to a normal forty-hour load and she still bottlenecks decisions, she does not have the capacity for your new scale. You must make the hard Right Seat call.

Transition her to a specialist seat where her deep tribal knowledge is utilized, but where she does not manage the entire operational engine. This is the only way to protect her health and your business.