Principle · Chief HR Officer

Right People in the Right Seats.

Source: Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't (2001), HarperBusiness. The "first who, then what" principle from Chapter 3.

The Principle

The conventional approach to building a company is to set the strategy first and then hire the people to execute it. Collins's research found that the companies that made the leap from good to great did the opposite. They got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats first. Then they figured out where to drive.

The reasoning is structural. Strategy depends on judgment, and judgment lives in the people who make the calls. A great strategy executed by the wrong people produces a mediocre outcome. An emerging strategy executed by the right people produces a great one, because the right people will adapt, course-correct, and find the path even when the original plan was wrong. People are the operating system. Strategy is the application that runs on top.

"Right" is two questions, not one. First, is this person right for the company at all? Do they share the values, the standards, the way of working? That is "right people on the bus." Second, is this person in the seat where their strengths are leveraged and their weaknesses do not matter? That is "right seat." A right person in a wrong seat looks like a performance problem. A wrong person in any seat is a culture problem. The two require different responses, and confusing them is the most expensive mistake in talent management.

Why It Matters Here

The CHRO is the executive who owns whether the company has the right people in the right seats. Every other role is a consumer of talent. The CHRO is the supplier and the steward. Without this principle, hiring becomes reactive (fill the open seat with the best available), seats become accidental (jobs grow around the person rather than the outcome), and performance management becomes confused (the wrong-person issue gets coached for years while the right-person-in-wrong-seat issue gets fired). With it, the CHRO has a clear sequence: define the seat by the outcome, find the person who fits the seat, and move quickly when the fit is wrong in either direction.

Signals (When to Apply)

A leadership team is being built, restructured, or reshaped
A high performer is unhappy or disengaged in their current role
A role has been open for more than 90 days and the company is "settling" on a candidate
An executive is debating strategy without first having the team to execute it
A hiring decision is being justified by "we need a body" rather than "this is the right person"

How to Apply

Define every seat with a written scorecard before opening the search. Outcomes the seat must produce, competencies required, culture-fit signals expected. No outcomes, no scorecard, no hire.
Separate the two questions in every people decision. Is this the right person for the bus? (values, standards, way of working) Is this the right seat for the person? (strengths, leverage, growth path) Address each on its own terms.
When fit is uncertain on the first question (right person), move faster, not slower. Wrong-person hires get more expensive every month. Conventional severance is small compared to the cost of a wrong-person hire who stays a year.
When fit is wrong on the second question (right seat), reassign before firing. A great person in the wrong seat is a great person waiting for the right seat. Often the right seat exists in the company. Look first.
Refuse to lower the standard. "Almost the right person" is a wrong-person hire in slow motion. Keep the seat open longer rather than fill it badly.
Audit the leadership team annually using the same lens. Right person in the right seat? If a name on the org chart would not be re-hired today, that name needs a conversation, not a quarterly review.
Make the values explicit and consistently enforced. "Right person on the bus" is meaningless without clarity on what the bus actually is. The values define it.

Examples

Applied well A 30-person services firm has a head of operations who is loved by the team, hits her metrics, and shares the founder's values. She has been in the role two years. As the company doubles, the operations seat now requires deep systems thinking and the ability to manage 12 directs across two functions. She is great with five directs and uncomfortable with systems work. The CHRO does not fire her and does not pretend the seat fits. Instead, the CHRO creates a head of client experience role (where her strengths thrive) and runs a search for a new head of operations who fits the larger seat. Right person, new seat, right outcome. The founder keeps a values-aligned executive and gets the systems thinking the company now needs.

Misapplied The same firm keeps the same head of operations in the same seat as the company doubles, hoping she will grow into the new requirements. Eighteen months later, systems are broken, three of the new directs have left, and the founder is doing operations work directly. Eventually the founder lets her go. The exit is painful for everyone, the firm loses two more team members in the aftermath, and the role is filled in panic mode by an external hire who turns out to be a wrong-person fit. Two failures (wrong seat and then wrong person) where one timely conversation could have produced a clean reassignment.

When to Break It

In an existential crisis where keeping the wrong person for 90 more days is cheaper than the disruption of moving them. Bound the exception to a date. The exception ends on a calendar.
For early-stage roles where the seat itself is still being defined and the person hired is the one defining it. The right-seat question is suspended until the seat exists. The right-person question is not.
When a single individual is structurally critical (a co-founder, a key technical person, an irreplaceable client relationship) and removing them would cost more than the seat misfit. Build around them rather than reassign them. Acknowledge the trade-off out loud.