We have a team member who is an absolute culture fit and shares all of our core values, but he is consistently failing to hit his targets in our newly restructured Operations seat. How do we handle this specific dilemma?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is the classic Right Person, Wrong Seat dilemma. Because this individual aligns perfectly with your core values, they are the right person. However, they lack the capacity to execute the roles of their current seat, which makes it the wrong seat.

When you are preparing for an exit, you cannot afford to leave people in seats they do not GWC™. It compromises your operational efficiency and creates drag that buyers will immediately notice during due diligence.

Your first step is to see if there is another seat in the organization that this person gets, wants, and has the capacity to do. If your Accountability Chart has an open seat in a different department, or if you can restructure another area to fit their skills, you should transition them.

However, you must never create a seat just to keep a nice person on the payroll. This is a common trap that bloats overhead and kills profitability. If there is no legitimate, budgeted seat in your current structure that they GWC™, you must make the hard decision to let them go.

Explain to them that they are a fantastic culture fit, but the business has scaled past their current capabilities. Offer them a generous transition package. Handling this with transparency and respect preserves your company culture while maintaining the high-performance structure required for a successful exit.