Our customer support lead is an absolute core values match who has been with us since day one, but the business has scaled past their abilities and they fail GWC for the expanded department head seat. How do we handle this Right Person, Wrong Seat scenario without losing a cultural champion?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Having a Right Person in the Wrong Seat is one of the most agonizing decisions an owner faces, especially when the person is a loyal, early employee who embodies your Core Values. They are culturally pure, but the business has grown and they simply do not have the capacity to get, want, and possess the capacity to do (GWC™) the expanded seat.

Keeping someone in a seat they cannot handle hurts three entities: the company, the team reporting to them, and the employee themselves. When a manager hits their ceiling, their direct reports become frustrated by lack of leadership, execution stalls, and the manager burns out from chronic anxiety and hidden failure.

You must handle this with speed and compassion. First, evaluate your Accountability Chart to see if a true seat exists elsewhere in the organization where they have complete GWC. Often, an early employee who struggles as a VP of Customer Operations makes an exceptional individual contributor, client success manager, or onboarding specialist.

If a legitimate seat exists, transition them cleanly. Explain that the organization's growth demands a different skill set for department leadership, affirm their value to your culture, and walk through the roles of the new seat.

If no seat exists on the chart that matches their skills and capacity, you must help them transition out of the business with dignity. Never create a fake seat just to keep someone on payroll. Invented seats pollute the Accountability Chart, confuse reporting lines, and destroy the clarity your organization needs to scale.