We recently shifted our business from custom service delivery to standardized, software-enabled contracts, and our veteran Director of Operations no longer seems to Get the seat, even though she has high loyalty and wants the job. How do we objectively evaluate and address a Does Not Get It failure in a long-tenured leader?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In the EOS® People Analyzer, Getting it represents an innate, intuitive grasp of how the seat operates. It is not about tenure, intelligence, loyalty, or effort. When a company changes its business model from bespoke manual delivery to standardized, software-enabled execution, the operational seat fundamentally transforms.

A leader who does not Get the new seat cannot anticipate operational bottlenecks. They attempt to solve structural software problems by throwing more manual hours at client accounts. They work sixty hours a week, yet projects stall and team frustration rises. You cannot train intuitive understanding; a person either sees the machinery in their head or they do not.

Address this directly in your next quarterly conversation. Place the Accountability Chart on the table and walk through the five core roles of the Operations seat under your new delivery model. Be transparent about where the execution is breaking down.

Give the leader a strict thirty-day to sixty-day evaluation window. Assign one or two Rocks that demand command of the new model, such as standardizing an automated onboarding workflow or establishing repeatable quality metrics.

If they fail to deliver intuitive mastery within that window, you have an objective Right Person, Wrong Seat situation. Because she aligns with your core values, your first step is to see if there is another seat on the chart she Gets, Wants, and has the Capacity to do (GWC™). If no such seat exists, you must transition her out of the business with fairness and gratitude. Keeping someone who does not Get the seat cripples your company and burns out the leader.