One of your many challenges as a manager is determining who on your team has the capacity to be effective in their current role or an open position they want to take.

In Traction, capacity is the last measurable in the GWC equation and is defined this way: “Capacity means having the time as well as the mental, physical, and emotional capacity to do a job well.”

At a recent business luncheon, a CEO was asked how many people work in his company: “About half of them,” he responded.

Sadly, this glib comment validates what Gallup has been stating for years. Employee engagement levels have hovered around 30% since about 2000, with the most recent statistic at 32% in 2015.

Engaged employees are enthusiastic about their work, dedicated to the success of the company and willing to go the extra mile to ensure it succeeds. They can take a company from good to great.

I’ve worked with dozens of entrepreneurs who started their EOS journey wanting, among other things, more “buy-in” from their employees. While I understand how rare and precious it is to have team members who share and want to achieve your company’s vision, the term “buy-in” itself has always troubled me.

After all, if you have to “buy” someone’s allegiance, does she really share your vision? Can you really count on her to help you achieve that vision? How about when the going gets tough? And, how much are you having to pay, anyway?

For a company to be successful, they’ve got to have great people on their team. Great people are people who fit seamlessly into your culture, they share your core values, and they’re very talented for their role in the business. Once they were hired in and brought up to speed, everything felt great.

Then one day something changed. You can’t put your finger on the exact moment, but suddenly they don’t feel as great as they once did in that position. This feeling is subtly nagging in the back of your mind, but you’ve got too many other things going on at the moment to address it.

When working with our leadership teams, we spend a lot of time strengthening the People Component of their business. We work on the two disciplines: getting the Right People into the Right Seats on the Accountability Chart™. You must have both – Right People and Right Seats.

I have helped a number of leadership teams make the difficult people decision when they determine one of their employees is either the wrong person or in the wrong seat. Our approach to this issue is the Three Strike Rule.