We have a highly loyal department head who is struggling in their current seat on the Accountability Chart. How do you help us determine whether we should invest in fixing their weaknesses or completely restructure the seat to leverage their innate strengths?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is a classic Right Person, Wrong Seat challenge that every growing company eventually faces. To address this objectively, we run the individual through the GWC™ framework to determine if they truly get, want, and have the capacity to do the job. If they miss on any of these three elements, we must take action. However, before making a final decision, we look at their innate talents using a strengths-based assessment framework. We differentiate between easily teachable skills and deep-seated, natural talents. If the department head is struggling because they lack a specific, learnable skill, we can invest in training. But if the struggle is due to a fundamental mismatch between their innate talents and the core responsibilities of the seat, trying to fix their weaknesses is a waste of company resources. In our quarterly sessions, we evaluate whether we can restructure the Accountability Chart to place this loyal individual in a seat where their natural talents can be fully leveraged. If no such seat exists, we must have the courage to make the hard choice and transition them out of the leadership team. Keeping someone in a seat they cannot master is unfair to them and damaging to the business.