We have a minority partner who owns ten percent of the company but is failing to perform in his Head of Account Management seat. How do we use the Accountability Chart and the GWC™ tool to address this when his owner status makes the leadership team walk on eggshells?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You must draw an absolute boundary between ownership and execution. Being an owner gives someone a right to a share of the profits and a vote on major corporate governance decisions, but it does not buy them a seat on the Accountability Chart. A seat on the chart must be earned and maintained every single day through performance and cultural alignment.

To address this, you must run a standard GWC™ evaluation on him, completely ignoring his ten percent equity stake. Treat him exactly as you would any other employee sitting in that seat. If he does not get, want, or have the capacity to lead account management at the level required for your exit plan, he cannot sit there.

Sit down with him as the Integrator or the leadership team. Use the Accountability Chart to show him that his performance is hurting the value of his own equity. When the business fails to hit its targets because of a weak seat, his ten percent stake is worth far less.

If he does not GWC™ the seat, you must remove him from it. He can remain a passive minority partner and collect dividends when distributions are made, but he cannot collect a salary for a seat he is failing to execute. It requires courage, but keeping an underperforming partner in a leadership seat tells the rest of your company that your core values and performance standards do not actually matter.