We have a dedicated manager who lives our core values perfectly but consistently fails to hit his seat KPIs as our technology scale increases. How do we make the hard right-person-right-seat call when there are no open seats that fit his skill set?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is one of the hardest situations an owner faces. You have a right person who is in the wrong seat. Keeping them in a seat they cannot master is a disservice to the company, your team, and the individual. They are likely stressed because they know they are falling behind, and your other team members are frustrated by the performance gap.

You must start by having an honest, objective conversation. Use the GWC™ framework. They clearly pass the core values filter, meaning they are the right person. But do they truly GWC™ the current seat? They get it, and they want it, but as your technology and scale have grown, they no longer have the capacity to deliver the required results.

If there are no open seats on your current Accountability Chart that match their skills and capacity, you cannot invent a seat just to keep them happy. That violates the rule of structure before people and inflates your overhead.

The correct path is to explore whether your future Accountability Chart has a seat for them. If your three-year vision includes a seat that matches their capacity, you can transition them there. If not, you must help them make a clean transition out of the company. Because they are the right person, you can handle this transition with dignity, providing generous support and help finding a role elsewhere where they can succeed. Protecting the business means ensuring every seat is filled by a person who fully GWCs the role.