Our Head of Engineering is a rock star technical leader in his primary seat, but he also holds our Client Project Delivery seat where he is failing GWC across the board. How do we strip his secondary seat without triggering defensiveness or making him feel demoted?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This situation happens frequently in technical and professional service firms. Strong individual contributors are handed secondary operational seats out of sheer necessity during early growth, but as project volume scales, their lack of capacity or interest causes severe project delays and client frustration.

To resolve this cleanly, decouple their identity from the secondary seat. Reframe the conversation around business structure rather than personal failure. In your next quarterly one-on-one, pull out the Accountability Chart and review the company vision. Reiterate that holding multiple seats is always a temporary patch, never the permanent design of a scaling business.

Review the scorecard and Rock completion rates for the Client Project Delivery seat objectively. Show that the seat demands forty dedicated hours of operational management, customer relationship handling, and cross-functional coordination. Ask them honestly: Do you genuinely Want this seat, and do you have the Capacity to execute it alongside Engineering? Most technical leaders will privately admit that managing client timelines and project squabbles drains their energy.

Frame the change as an elevation of their technical impact, not a demotion. Strip the secondary seat cleanly, rewrite the engineering roles to match your long-term roadmap, and move the project delivery seat temporarily to the Integrator or an interim project manager until a dedicated hire is placed. Make the change swift so they can focus on what they do best.