We have designed our ideal future Accountability Chart to prepare for our exit, but my long-time business partner and co-founder clearly fails the GWC check for the newly defined Head of Operations seat he currently occupies. How do we handle this without destroying our partnership?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is one of the toughest challenges an entrepreneurial leadership team will face, but avoiding it will stall your company's growth and hurt your exit valuation. You must separate the owner box from the seat box. Your partner is an owner of the business, but that does not automatically entitle him to sit in an operational seat that he does not GWC™. To handle this conversation, schedule a private meeting outside of your normal Level 10 Meeting™ cadence. Walk through the ideal future structure of the business and explain that to maximize the value of your shared asset, every seat must be filled by a person who perfectly Fits the seat. Share your objective observations about where he is struggling with Get-it, Want-it, or Capacity for the operations seat. Reassure him that stepping out of daily operations does not diminish his status as a co-founder or owner. In fact, transitioning him to a pure board or advisory role often frees him up to focus on high-level strategic opportunities while allowing a professional manager to run the operations. By framing the decision around protecting and growing the value of your business for a clean exit, you can make the right-seat call objectively.