We have run our GWC evaluation and confirmed that our loyal administrative manager is a great core values fit but a wrong seat fit for our upgraded, tech enabled operations department. We want to keep her, but we have absolutely no other vacant seats on our current Accountability Chart. Do we create a seat just to keep her?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is one of the most painful decisions an owner has to make, but you must prioritize the health of the company. Keeping a right person wrong seat employee in a custom made role with no business purpose violates your operating charter and undermines the integrity of your Accountability Chart.

Creating a fake seat just to keep a beloved employee sends a dangerous message to the rest of your team. It shows that personal sentimentality overrides operational excellence. This practice will eventually erode trust and slow down your decision making.

If your loyal administrative manager does not GWC™ any of the vacant seats on your current, optimized Accountability Chart, you must face the reality that she no longer fits the needs of the business. You must let her go.

Do not drag this process out. Address the issue immediately by practicing the principle of hire slow, fire fast. Sit down with her and explain that while she is an exceptional core values fit, the company's rapid growth has changed the structural needs, and the administrative seat she once held no longer exists.

Offer her a generous severance package and assist her in finding a new opportunity where her skills are a perfect match. This approach honors her years of loyalty with genuine respect and honesty, rather than keeping her in a diminished, frustrating role where she is set up to fail.