We have a leadership team member who has been with us for ten years and is a perfect core values fit, but they have failed to hit their quarterly Rocks for three consecutive quarters. How do we decide if they need to be moved to a different seat or exit the company?

This is a classic Right Person, Wrong Seat dilemma, and it is one of the hardest challenges a business owner faces. When someone is a perfect fit for your core values, they are a Right Person. However, if they consistently miss their Rocks and metrics, they are in the Wrong Seat.

You cannot ignore this. Allowing a leadership team member to underperform for three quarters straight destroys accountability across the entire organization.

To make a clean decision, use the GWC tool. Ask yourself: Do they truly Get this seat? Do they Want this seat? Do they have the mental, emotional, and physical Capacity to do this job at our current scale?

Often, a leader who was perfect when you were at three million is simply out of their depth at fifteen million. They have reached their capacity ceiling.

If they GWC a different, less complex seat on your Accountability Chart, and you have an open seat that fits them, you can transition them. This preserves their valuable core values alignment and historical knowledge.

However, if you do not have a seat that fits their capabilities, or if they refuse to accept a lower-level role, you must exit them from the business. Keeping them in a seat they cannot perform is unfair to them, toxic to the team, and holding your company back from reaching its potential.

Category: Leadership Team