Our loyal Head of Customer Success has perfect core values alignment and has been with us since day one, but we have outgrown her strategic capability. She cannot build the automated systems we need. Do we fire her, or is there an EOS way to handle this?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is one of the hardest decisions an owner will face, but you must separate loyalty from capability. To run a healthy business, you need the right people in the right seats. Your Head of Customer Success may be a perfect Right Person, meaning she shares your core values completely, but she is no longer in the Right Seat because she does not GWC™ the role at your current scale.

GWC™ stands for Get it, Want it, and have the Capacity to do it. While she gets and wants the role, she lacks the capacity to build the complex systems your scaled company requires. Keeping her in a seat she cannot successfully fill is actually disloyal to her and the rest of the team because she is set up to fail every day.

Your first step is to use the Accountability Chart to design the ideal seat for your current and future needs, completely ignoring names. Once the seat is defined, look at your loyal employee. Since she has excellent core values, your goal is to find or create a different seat in the organization where she does GWC™ the responsibilities.

This might mean moving her out of leadership into a key individual contributor role, such as managing your highest-value legacy clients. If such a seat does not exist or she refuses to step down, you must transition her out of the company with immense gratitude and a generous severance. Keeping her in a seat she cannot perform damages the business and erodes team morale.