Stanford professor Jim Collins shaped modern management with a simple image. Building a great company is like driving a bus. Before you choose the destination, you must get the right people on the bus and, just as important, into the right seats.
The right seat is more than a box on an org chart. It is the alignment of someone’s natural strengths with the role they occupy. A team can be filled with talented people, but if even a few are misaligned, progress slows or stops altogether.
The EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) framework brings practical clarity to Collins’s idea. A right person is someone who reflects your core values and fits your culture. A right seat is someone who is truly suited for the role. EOS captures this through the acronym GWC.
Gets it. They intuitively understand the role and what success looks like.
Wants it. They are internally motivated to do the work.
Capacity to do it. They have the skills, time, and cognitive ability to succeed.
Most mismatches come from a missing piece. Someone may get it and want it, yet lack the capacity. Or they want it, but never fully grasp the work, like a manager whose strategy toolkit is limited to TED Talk quotes. The most damaging case is when someone does not want it at all, yet stays out of loyalty or habit and builds bitterness and resentment.
This problem is common in small businesses. One person often wears multiple hats, some chosen and some inherited. People accept new responsibilities because the company needs it, not because the work fits who they are.
I saw this clearly in my own company. Our bookkeeper also handled HR. On paper the pairing made sense. Payroll and HR compliance overlap. In practice it was a mistake. Accounting is about precision and systems. HR is about people, conflict, and coaching. She got the HR role and had the capacity, but she did not want it. The politics and interpersonal strain drained her energy. Like many loyal employees, she accepted extra seats because no one else was available.
Leadership requires more than filling seats. It requires removing people from the wrong ones. Clarity about what someone should not do is just as important as clarity about what they should do. Competence alone is not the standard. Alignment is. Our responsibility is to understand what each person gets, wants, and has the capacity to do, then guide them into the role where they can thrive.
This principle extends far beyond business. It cuts to the heart of parenting, teaching, and human connection.
David Brooks writes in How to Know a Person about asking people: “When in your life did you feel truly seen?” Most can identify a moment, often rare, when someone looked past the surface and responded to the deeper self. To truly see someone is to be fully present with them, to notice without distraction or agenda. It means quieting the noise of our own thoughts long enough to recognize what is real in another. The question isn’t, If I were them, what would I do? It’s, Because they are who they are, what do they need?
In developmental psychology this is called attunement. The ability to understand and respond to someone’s inner state. Attunement is a form of deep presence. It fosters trust, builds self-confidence, and encourages growth. The same is true for managers. Employees who feel seen do better work and stay longer.
Parents often struggle with this. They love deeply and naturally try to guide their children with the tools that shaped their own lives. We default to “chanokh la’naar al pi darkeinu” – educate the child according to our way. Our instincts tell us that we want our children to live a similar lifestyle to ours. We assume that what worked for us must work for them.
Mishley teaches something different. Chanoch la’naar al pi darko. Educate the child according to his way. A small shift in wording, but a profound shift in mindset. It demands that we see our children as they are, not as extensions of ourselves.
Rav Hirsch brings this home in his reading of Parshat Toldot. Yitzchak and Rivka raised two sons with opposite temperaments yet with a similar pedagogy. Yaakov, the quiet learner, thrived under their approach. Esav, the man of the field, did not. Rav Hirsch argues that their mistake was not a lack of love, but a lack of attunement. They did not practice “al pi darko.” Esav’s nature was never channeled. It was overridden. His path “off the derech” was a reaction to a style of education that did not align with his natural temperament.
Yaakov took a different approach. When blessing his children, the Torah states, “ish asher kebirkato beirach otam.” He blessed each one according to their natural blessing. No single mold, no uniform expectations. He saw each child clearly, then shaped a blessing that matched their individual strengths and character.
Modern leadership frameworks echo this ancient insight. People grow when the role fits their nature. Whether we are raising a child or leading a team, the work begins with seeing the person in front of us. Only then can we help them reach their potential.
GWC is more than a business tool. It is a way of understanding human capability. Get it, want it, and capacity reflect how people naturally operate. The job of a leader, parent, or mentor is to align these elements so that development becomes natural and fulfilling.
In both leadership and parenting, the goal is not control. It is nurturing. And nurturing starts with humility. We honor others by seeing them for who they are, not who we wish them to be.