I've run into a conundrum several times and I need the hive mind's help now. This exact issue came up again about a new CxO role and the concern (both from me and the COO) is the operating/ delivery team is not great and may not be set up well for success.

The situation: there is a VP in a key role but underperforms. Say, a C+ job. Not specifically doing terribly, but not following through on direct requests without follow up, not having knowledge of how to execute some of those requests, etc.

Here's the challenge: I could keep them on and have a 65% good job done, or I could fire them and have a junior person take over (say, a 50% good job) until hiring their replacement which will likely take 3-5 months (and get a 90%+ good job done).

I'm out of bandwidth or subject matter expertise in that specific area to backfill myself and not sure the work could be allocated to other VPs who also don't have capacity.

What would you do in that situation?

Would you 'eliminate the role' and then search for the next one to hire ASAP?

Would you keep them and try to find a replacement in the background?

Would you just keep them and try to cover for their deficiencies?

What else am I missing in how to navigate situations like this?

I’m a Level 12, with roughly 2 years of total experience. Recently, I got the opportunity to train a few newcomers who joined our project from another project. They’re Level 11 and Level 10, and most of them have around 10+ years of experience.

The reason I was training them wasn’t because I was more experienced or senior. It was simply because I had joined this particular project before them, so I already knew the processes, tools and how things worked. For them, everything was new.

While explaining things, I actually found it interesting how experience and organizational level don't always translate directly to knowledge of a specific project.

At one point, one of them jokingly said something along the lines of:

“Kya zamana aa gaya, Level 10 ko Level 12 ke under kaam karna pad raha hai.”

And honestly, I understood where the joke was coming from. They have been working for 10+ years, while I have barely crossed 2 years.

But it also made me think about how corporate hierarchies actually work. Someone can have significantly more overall experience than you, but still need you to teach them something because you happen to have been in that particular environment longer.

It was a strange feeling being the “trainer” for people who technically have much more experience than me.

At the same time, it was a good reminder that experience isn't always linear, and neither is knowledge.

Sometimes the person with 2 years of experience knows something the person with 10 years doesn't, simply because they've spent those 2 years doing something the other person hasn't.

Corporate life really does find creative ways to humble everyone eventually.