Most SME leaders don’t have a lazy team. They have a team that works hard, cares about the business, and still somehow can’t hit the numbers, deadlines, or standards the business needs. It’s one of the most frustrating positions a leader can be in, because the usual fixes don’t seem to work. More training doesn’t help. A pep talk doesn’t help. Even hiring more people doesn’t help, because the same problems just multiply.
Very often, the issue isn’t effort. It’s fit. Someone in the business is in the wrong seat, or the seat itself was never properly defined. This is where the “right people, right seats” principle, built around a simple three-part test known as Get It, Want It, Capacity to do it (GWC), becomes one of the most useful diagnostic tools a leader can have.
This framework originates from the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), the operating model popularised by Gino Wickman in his book Traction. It’s become widely used across SMEs because it turns a vague, uncomfortable feeling (“something’s not right with this role”) into a structured, honest conversation.
In this article, we’ll break down exactly what GWC means, how to use it to diagnose performance problems in your business, and what to do once you’ve identified a mismatch.
What Does “Right People, Right Seats” Actually Mean?
“Right people” refers to whether someone shares your business’s core values and behaves in a way consistent with how you want your business to operate. “Right seat” refers to whether that person is a strong fit for the specific role they’re in, regardless of how good a cultural fit they are overall.
This distinction matters because the two are often confused. A brilliant, values-aligned team member can still be in entirely the wrong seat. A skilled operator in the right seat can still be a poor cultural fit. Both situations create friction, but they need very different solutions. Confusing the two is one of the most common reasons underperformance drags on far longer than it should.
The GWC Test: Get It, Want It, Capacity to Do It
Once you’re confident someone is broadly the “right person” for your business, GWC is the test for whether they’re in the “right seat.” All three elements need to be true. If even one is missing, the role isn’t working, no matter how much effort or goodwill is present.
Get It
Does this person genuinely understand the role? Not just the task list, but how the role fits into the wider business, what “good” looks like, and what’s actually expected of them. Someone who “gets it” grasps the role intuitively, without needing everything spelt out repeatedly.
A person who doesn’t “get it” isn’t necessarily unintelligent or careless. The role may simply not match how they naturally think or work. No amount of explanation permanently fixes a “get it” gap, because the issue is fit, not information.
Want It
Does this person genuinely want this role, as it actually is, day to day, not the version of it they imagined when they took the job? Someone can want the title, the salary, or the seniority attached to a role while not actually wanting the substance of the work itself.
“Want it” gaps often show up as motivation issues, but treating them as a motivation problem misses the real cause. The person may be entirely capable and hardworking elsewhere; this specific seat just isn’t one they want.
Capacity to Do It
Does this person have the time, mental bandwidth, skills, and experience to do the role well, at the level the business currently needs? Capacity isn’t fixed. Someone might have capacity now but not as the business scales, or might currently lack capacity but be able to grow into it with the right support and time.
This is the element leaders most often try to solve with hard work alone, adding hours or pressure rather than addressing the actual gap in skill, experience, or bandwidth.
Diagnosing a GWC Gap: A Quick Reference
| Element | What it looks like when missing | What it is NOT |
|---|---|---|
| Get It | Confusion about priorities, needing the same things re-explained, decisions that miss the point of the role | Not a lack of effort or intelligence |
| Want It | Reluctance, procrastination on specific tasks, energy elsewhere in the business | Not necessarily poor overall attitude |
| Capacity | Missed deadlines, corners cut under pressure, quality drops as workload grows | Not laziness, and not always permanent |
Why This Matters More Than “Working Harder”
When a role isn’t working, the instinctive response is usually to push harder: more oversight, more targets, more pressure. This rarely works, because effort was never the missing ingredient. If someone doesn’t “get” a role, extra hours don’t create understanding. If someone doesn’t “want” a role, extra pressure often accelerates disengagement or resignation. If someone lacks capacity, extra workload simply exposes the gap faster and more visibly.
Businesses that rely on effort as the default fix tend to end up with the same underlying seat mismatches, just under more strain, more turnover, and more frustration on both sides. GWC forces a more honest, structured conversation: is this a “them” problem, a “seat” problem, or a “role definition” problem in the first place?
How to Apply GWC in Your Business
Step 1: Define the Seat Properly First
Many GWC mismatches aren’t really about the person at all. They’re about a role that was never clearly defined, has grown organically without structure, or was built around a previous person’s strengths rather than the business’s actual needs. Before assessing anyone against GWC, make sure the seat itself is clearly defined: outcomes, responsibilities, and what success actually looks like.
Step 2: Assess Each Element Honestly and Separately
Score Get It, Want It, and Capacity independently, rather than forming one overall impression. It’s common to find someone is strong on two elements and weak on one, which points to a very different fix than being weak across all three.
Step 3: Have the Direct Conversation
GWC works best as a shared framework, not just a leadership diagnosis done behind closed doors. Talking through it openly with the individual, rather than assuming, often surfaces things leadership hadn’t considered, such as a role that changed significantly since they were hired.
Step 4: Fix the Gap Deliberately
- If it’s a Get It gap, consider whether better onboarding, clearer process documentation, or a different reporting structure would close it, or whether the mismatch is fundamental.
- If it’s a Want It gap, be honest about whether this is fixable through changing the role, or whether it’s a sign the person belongs in a different seat entirely, possibly elsewhere in the business.
- If it’s a Capacity gap, decide whether this is a temporary, closeable gap (training, support, time) or a structural one (the role has simply outgrown the person, or the person has outgrown the role).
Step 5: Revisit It as the Business Grows
Seats that were a perfect fit at ten employees often aren’t a perfect fit at thirty. GWC isn’t a one-off assessment; it’s a recurring check, particularly during periods of growth, restructuring, or when a role’s scope has quietly expanded.
Where This Connects to Wider Business Operations
Seat mismatches rarely exist in isolation. They’re often a symptom of the same underlying issue we see across many SME operations: unclear process, unclear ownership, and systems that were never properly mapped to how the business actually runs. A CRM nobody trusts, a reporting process that takes hours instead of minutes, or decisions made on gut feel rather than data often trace back to exactly this kind of structural gap.
This is why we treat people, process, and systems as one connected picture rather than separate problems. Our Business Consulting work typically starts with exactly this kind of audit: mapping roles, responsibilities, and bottlenecks before recommending a single tool or system change.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GWC the same as a skills assessment? No. Capacity covers skill and experience, but Get It and Want It are about understanding and motivation, which a skills assessment doesn’t capture. Someone can be highly skilled and still fail the GWC test if they don’t want or don’t intuitively grasp the role.
Can someone move from a GWC failure to a GWC pass in the same seat? Yes, particularly on Get It and Capacity, which can often be improved through better onboarding, clearer documentation, mentoring, or additional training. Want It is harder to change, since it reflects genuine motivation rather than a skills or knowledge gap.
What if someone is right on Get It and Want It, but weak on Capacity? This is often the most fixable combination. If the person understands and wants the role, a capacity gap can frequently be closed with training, support, delegation of specific tasks, or more time, particularly if the gap has only appeared recently due to growth.
Should GWC be used during hiring, or only for existing team members? Both. It’s a useful lens for evaluating candidates against a clearly defined seat, but it’s equally, if not more, valuable for diagnosing performance issues in roles that already exist and may have drifted from their original scope.
What’s the risk of ignoring a GWC gap? Left unaddressed, GWC gaps tend to create a ripple effect: other team members absorb the shortfall, resentment builds, and the underlying issue is often misdiagnosed as a motivation, attitude, or leadership problem rather than a structural seat mismatch.
Does GWC apply to leadership roles too? Yes. Leaders are just as capable of being in the wrong seat as any other team member, and it’s often harder to spot, since leadership roles are less closely observed day to day.
Where does the GWC framework come from? GWC is a core concept within the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), an operating model for SMEs popularised by Gino Wickman in his book Traction. It’s widely used because it turns a vague sense that “something’s off” into a specific, actionable diagnosis.
Key Takeaways
- Underperformance is rarely about effort. It’s usually a mismatch between the person and the seat.
- “Right people” (values fit) and “right seats” (role fit) are separate questions and need separate solutions.
- GWC tests three things independently: does the person Get it, Want it, and have the Capacity to do it.
- All three need to be true. A strong score on two out of three still means the role isn’t working.
- Fixing effort or pressure rarely resolves a GWC gap, because effort was never the missing ingredient.
- Define the seat clearly before assessing the person against it; many mismatches are really role-definition problems.
- Seat fit should be revisited periodically, especially as the business grows and roles evolve.
- People and operations issues are usually connected: unclear seats often sit alongside unclear process and poorly adopted systems.
If your business is hitting the same performance issues despite a hardworking team, the seat, not the person, might be the place to start looking. Book a free 30-minute strategy call and we’ll help you get a clear, honest picture of what’s really going on.
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