If you've spent any time in EOS, you know the GWC framework. Get it, Want it, Capacity to Do it. It asks three questions: does this person understand the role, do they want it, and can they execute? If someone fails any of the three, they're not right for the seat.
It's a good filter. It's better than most organizations use, which is a combination of tenure, availability, and whoever was standing closest when the fire started.
That last one is worth sitting with. People end up in roles not because anyone made a deliberate decision, but because they were available when the crisis hit. Then the crisis passes and nobody revisits the seat. GWC feels like a massive upgrade from that, and it is.
But it has a blind spot. And if you're scaling a team, that blind spot will cost you.
I've seen this pattern repeatedly in the organizations we work with.
A senior developer who understands the team lead role. Wants the responsibility. Or wants the raise that comes with it enough to convince themselves they do.
Let's be honest. Most organizations have structured compensation so the only path to more money runs through management. A lot of people want the raise enough to believe they want the leadership. That's not a character flaw. That's an incentive design problem. And GWC can't catch it because the person isn't lying. They've genuinely talked themselves into wanting it.
But their natural wiring is deep focus and problem-solving, not context-switching across six people's work every day. They said yes because it was the next step. Leadership said yes because GWC checked out.
GWC said green. And at first, it looked green. The new lead was motivated, engaged, diving in. But motivation fades when the work fights your wiring. Six months later, the team is frustrated and the new lead is quietly burning out.
Here's what makes this so hard to catch: the problems that surface don't look like a strengths problem. They look like a performance problem. Or a motivation problem. Or a "culture fit" problem. Leaders start questioning the person's commitment when the real issue is the seat, not the person.
What's missing is a layer underneath GWC: alignment with core strengths and natural makeup.
Wanting a job and being wired for it are two different things. Having the capacity to do work doesn't mean that work plays to your strengths.
There's a second pattern that's even harder to spot.
It's the person who isn't struggling. They're competent. Steady. No red flags. They hit their numbers, attend the meetings, never cause problems.
But they're operating at 60% of what they'd deliver in a role aligned to their strengths. Nobody notices because "fine" doesn't trigger alarm bells. There's no burnout to diagnose, no conflict to resolve. Just quiet underperformance that compounds over months and years.
This is the more expensive version of the problem. The person burning out eventually forces a conversation. The person performing "fine" in the wrong seat never does. They just coast, the organization settles for less than it could get, and nobody questions it because the metrics aren't screaming.
There's a question you can ask yourself about anyone on your team right now. Not "can they do this job" but "does this job energize them or drain them?"
Someone in the right seat doesn't just perform. They recharge from the work itself. Someone in the wrong seat can still deliver, but every day costs them something. You see it in how they show up over time, not in any single performance review.
If you can't answer that question about your people, that's the deeper problem. You can't align what you haven't paid attention to.
We use tools like CliftonStrengths and DiSC in our work with organizations, as diagnostic instruments that accelerate conversations that make explicit what you're already sensing but can't name.
This is why the People pillar matters as much as Process and Product when we assess an organization. You can have the right strategy, strong processes, and solid technology, and if your people are grinding against their own wiring every day, you're still going to see delivery problems. You're going to see turnover you can't explain. You're going to see teams that should work on paper but don't in practice.
One question fills seats. The other one asks whether your organization even lets people end up in the right one.
