Our Customer Success Director is a shining star when it comes to our core values, and the team loves her. However, as we prepare for an exit, her department's retention metrics are consistently falling short, and she lacks the analytical skills to diagnose the problem. How do we address this Right Person, Wrong Seat situation without demotivating our entire customer success team?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a classic Right Person, Wrong Seat scenario. Your Customer Success Director is a Right Person because she fits your core values perfectly, but she is in the Wrong Seat because she lacks the Capacity to deliver the analytical results required at your current scale. Keeping her in this seat will lead to continued poor metrics, which will damage your valuation.

To handle this transition without damaging morale, you must be transparent and objective. Use the GWC™ framework to explain that while her cultural leadership is outstanding, the seat now requires analytical capabilities that do not align with her natural strengths. Explain that keeping her in a seat where she cannot succeed is unfair to her and dangerous for the business.

Work to transition her to a seat where her relational strengths are maximized, such as a client relationship or culture-focused role that does not require heavy data analysis. Then, recruit an analytically driven leader for the Customer Success Director seat. Handling this transition with honesty and care shows your team that you protect your culture while refusing to compromise on performance. This structural maturity is exactly what buyers look for during due diligence.