Welcome back to The COO Solution Podcast! In this solo episode, host Derek Fredrickson tackles one of the biggest (and often most ignored) reasons businesses plateau: team misalignment.
Whether you’re leading a small but mighty team or managing a fast-growing company, your next level of growth depends on more than just sales and systems—it hinges on your people. In this episode, Derek shares how to utilize the “Right People, Right Seats” framework to audit your team, identify misalignment, and make informed leadership decisions that propel the business forward. You’ll walk away with practical strategies to assess your team’s current structure, clarify expectations, and realign your team to support your future growth.
In This Episode:
- [00:54] The Hard Truth – Why your team, not just your offers, determines your growth capacity.
- [01:54] Right People, Right Seats Framework – How to assess values, energy, and performance alignment.
- [02:46] When Good Isn’t Good Enough – A client story about letting go of loyal but misaligned team members.
- [04:22] The Right Seats – Understanding skill sets, responsibilities, and clarity of roles.
- [06:16] Role Clarity in Action – A client example of redefining team structure to eliminate confusion and chaos.
- [08:07] Signs of Team Misalignment – From stepping back into tasks to gut instincts you’re ignoring.
- [10:21] The Team Audit – Two critical questions to ask about every team member.
- [12:44] Leadership, Not Emotion – Why keeping misaligned team members helps no one.
- [13:37] The Ruthless Commitment – How scaling businesses apply this framework consistently.
- [15:10] Your Takeaway Challenge – Reassess one team member’s alignment for where you’re going, not just where you are.
📌 Why This Matters
Your systems and offers won’t scale unless your people can support them. By aligning your team to your vision, values, and future goals, you remove the friction that slows growth and reclaim the energy to lead with clarity and confidence.
✅ Action Steps for Listeners:
- Do a team audit: List every team member and ask, “Would I enthusiastically rehire them today?”
- Evaluate whether each person has the necessary skills, energy, and alignment to support your goals.
- Choose one person you’re unsure about and assess: are they set up for success long-term?
- Have the tough conversations now—it only gets harder later.
Resources & Links:
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Transcript:
00:01
Derek Fredrickson
Here’s the uncomfortable truth. Your business can only grow as far as your team can take you. And if the wrong people are in the wrong seats, I promise you it’s going to slow you down.
And welcome back to the COO Solution Podcast. I’m Derek Fredrickson, and today we’re unpacking one of the most important but often overlooked parts of scaling your team structure.
And in this episode, I’m going to show you why team misalignment is one of the biggest reasons businesses plateau. How to evaluate your current team using the right people, right seats framework. What to do when you discover gaps, friction, or accountability issues that are holding you back.
00:54
Derek Fredrickson
Let’s dive in and make sure your team is ready to scale smarter.
Most founders and business owners don’t realize the systems and people that help them grow to one level won’t necessarily take them to the next. The stakes get higher, the gaps get bigger, and the misalignment gets more expensive. Scaling isn’t just about more sales or new offers. It’s about people. It’s about your team. And I’m talking about the right people in the right seats. Align with your vision, your culture, and your expectations.
Without that foundation, every growth milestone feels harder than it should. And in this episode, we’re going to get honest about evaluating your team and fixing the hidden bottlenecks caused by misaligned roles, unclear expectations, or the wrong cultural fit. Because when you get the right people in the right seats, growth feels lighter, faster, and way more sustainable.
01:54
Derek Fredrickson
All right, let’s break this down. Because the right people, right seats framework isn’t just business theory. We’re going to put this into practice. It’s one of the most practical ways to take control of your team and set your business up for long-term sustainable growth. So let’s start with right people. The right people are the individuals on your team who align with your values and elevate your culture. It’s not just about whether they can do the job. It’s about whether they bring the right energy, mindset, and attitude to your business.
So ask yourself this. Do they live and breathe the values and the culture that matter to you and that matter to your business? Are they team players, or are they creating friction and drama and maybe even entitlement?
02:46
Derek Fredrickson
If you had the opportunity to hire them again today, would you? And listen, this one’s tough for a lot of founders because maybe you’ve worked with someone for years, maybe they’ve been loyal, maybe they’ve been great at the technical side of the job. But, if they’re not aligned with your values or culture, it’s going to show up in ways that drain your energy and ultimately drain your business. And I’ll give you a quick example.
We had a client here at The COO Solution, and that client kept a team member on board because, technically, they were skilled. They had been with them for quite some time. They were loyal, they had done a good job mostly in the past, but things started to shift, and their attitude and their energy and the way they communicated was eroding the team culture.
03:34
Derek Fredrickson
At the end of a meeting or at the end of a discussion, the founder felt drained, almost a bit irritated in some way. And the good people on the team were burning out, trying to work around them or with them, and almost kind of avoiding it. And the moment we made the tough call, which is never an easy decision to let them go, to release them from the organization, things shifted dramatically. Morale went up, results improved, and the business finally moved forward.
Lastly, the client, the founder felt energetically so much more confident in her business because she knew that she had to make the tough decision to let somebody go that was not going to get them to where she wanted to go in her business.
04:22
Derek Fredrickson
That team member brought them to where they were, but it was not the right team member to help her to get her to where she wanted to go.
So let’s talk about now. Right Seats. Right Seats is about role alignment. Does the person have the skill set, the strengths, and the capacity to do the job at the level your business needs today and also in the future? And the reality is, roles evolve, responsibilities evolve. As your business grows, you can never stay stagnant with your team. And sometimes good people outgrow their seats or the seat outgrows them. And so we always have to reevaluate. Do I have not only the right person, but are they in the right seat? And without those clear expectations, people can’t perform at their best.
05:15
Derek Fredrickson
Your team can’t read your mind if their seat isn’t clearly defined, if their role isn’t clearly defined, and furthermore, if their responsibilities aren’t clearly defined, meaning they don’t know exactly what they own, what success looks like, and what outcomes they’re responsible for. They’ll struggle, and you’ll feel like you’re babysitting, micromanaging, or constantly stepping in. I’ll give you an example with a client that we’ve worked with that had a very large team, and they were scaling at multiple seven figures, but their team structure didn’t evolve with them. A lot of the individuals on the team felt like they were wearing many hats, right?
06:16
Derek Fredrickson
And accountability was fuzzy. And even the best team members, what we call the A players, were confused about priorities, what to do, what to focus on, what to do next. And we had to redefine roles. We had to clarify what are the seats, what are the responsibilities, and make sure that we had the right people where they could win. And after that iteration, which does take time, we have to really get into the business and understand at an individual person and seat level what’s working, what’s not working. Things shifted and the difference was night and day. So there was less gchaos, there was more ownership, more accountability, and the founder finally had breathing room. So let’s be real for a second. Tolerating the wrong people or unclear seats slows your business down, period.
07:08
Derek Fredrickson
It creates bottlenecks, kills momentum, and keeps you stuck in the weeds trying to fix problems that shouldn’t exist. Here are a few signs that maybe you’ve got team misalignment and there’s no judgment, right? We’re always evaluating our team structure. We’re always looking at, do I have the right people in the right seats? And why? Because the team in your organization is the thing that’s going to get you to the next level. It’s not all on you. It can’t be all on you. It may have been all on you in the past, but in order to scale, especially at multiple seven figures, the team that you have is the backbone of your organization to allow you to focus on the bigger future, the bigger vision, and your long-term goals and success.
08:07
Derek Fredrickson
So here are the signs that maybe you’ve got team misalignment. Number one, you’re constantly stepping back into tasks you thought were handled. You thought you gave it to somebody on your team, you thought the instructions were clear, you delegated it, but you’re still involved, they’re still checking with you, they’re still asking for direction, they’re making mistakes, things are falling through the cracks.
All right, Number two, accountability is murky, and the stuff that’s falling through the cracks and is inevitably bubbling back up onto your plate. There’s really no sense of ownership or I’ve got it, or I’m owning it. They feel like I can only do one step, and then I need to get more direction, or I need to always feel like I’m asking a question.
Number three, team drama, gossip, or entitlement or disengagement creeps in. You can sense this.
08:54
Derek Fredrickson
You can not only see this, but you can feel it. You can feel it in their communication. You can feel it, and maybe the way they show up to a team meeting or the way that they collaborate and communicate with other team members.
Number four, you dread certain meetings because of specific team dynamics. Like I said, you may be leading a team meeting, or perhaps you’re with a fractional COO and they’re leaving a team meeting. You can see that this individual team member is checked out. They’re disengaged. They’re not taking ownership. They’re not speaking up. Right. We want people to be elevating and expanding their role and responsibilities. And people say, I got it. I can take care of it. Let me handle that for you. Or here’s the plan, or here’s the idea.
09:37
Derek Fredrickson
We want people to really create that sense of responsibility and own that sense of accountability.
And number five, you just have a gut feeling that something feels off, but you’ve been avoiding it. And this is the biggest trap about team misalignment. This is one of the hardest decisions founders need to make is to agree to the fact that this team member is probably not the right fit. I often say if they’re not a five out of five, then they need to be aligned in a different seat or have a conversation with them to determine if they are the right person and if they continue to struggle at being a five out of five. Maybe they’re a three out of five or a four out of five, but if it’s not a win-win, a win for the team member and win for you.
10:21
Derek Fredrickson
That’s not something that you can scale. Does this maybe sound familiar? So here’s the thing. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. We’ve all been there. Most founders wait too long to deal with this, but the sooner you fix it, the faster your business scales.
So, how do you actually apply this? Well, let’s start with a team audit. It’s simple, but very powerful. Very, very effective. Here’s how you do it. You can list every person on your team. Okay. That’s step number one. And step number two is you ask yourself these simple questions. Are they the right person? Based on what I’ve described in terms of values, commitment, and engagement, and would I enthusiastically rehire them today? I want to emphasize this question again.
11:06
Derek Fredrickson
If you’re considering that somebody on your team may not be the right person, then ask yourself this question for the role that you have or the seat that they’re in. If you were to invite them to apply for that role again today, would you enthusiastically rehire them today? If the answer is a five out of five, yes. Great. You’ve got the right person. But if you’re feeling and sensing that they’re not a five out of five and you feel like you could and should do better, then they’re probably not the right person. Okay.
The second question you ask yourself is..
11:54
Derek Fredrickson
Are they in the right seat? Do they have the skills, capacity, and clarity to perform right? I often say we want to check the boxes, right? That they know what to do and how to do it, and they’re good at doing it. Right. That means that they’ve got the kind of practical knowledge and skill set. But then there’s the softer component. Do they have the same alignment with your vision, with your ideals, with your culture, with your value?
12:44
Derek Fredrickson
Okay, if the answer to these questions is no or not, very clearly a five out of five, you’ve got some decisions to make. And these are not easy decisions. Maybe they need coaching, repositioning, or in some cases, you need to have a not-so-easy conversation about whether they still belong on the team. And here’s the mindset shift. This isn’t personal. This is about leadership. You’re building a business that serves your vision, your clients, and your future. Keeping the wrong people in the wrong seats helps nobody. It doesn’t help you. And it also doesn’t help them because it holds them back, and also holds your business back. I’ve seen this play out over and over. The businesses that scale that we work with at the COO Solution scale the fastest are ruthless about alignment.
13:37
Derek Fredrickson
They hire, restructure, and make the tough decisions with our guidance and support to ensure the right people and the right seats from Framework is front and center. It’s always top of mind. We’re always looking at team and evaluating and assessing. Do we have the right people? Do we have the right seats? We have a new seat that we need to hire for. Make sure we find the right person in that right seat. We have this seat, and we’re not so certain that this is the right person. Let’s discuss it. Evaluate. Make some tough decisions if necessary. If you want a business that grows without constant firefighting, if you want a team that owns their roles and drives your vision forward, it starts here. Now, we’re going to get into an actionable step in just a minute.
14:24
Derek Fredrickson
But if you’re listening to this and realizing this misalignment on your team, don’t panic. Don’t worry. You’re already ahead of most founders by being willing to look at it and make some tough decisions. Alignment isn’t a one-time fix. It’s something great leaders evaluate constantly. The right people, right seats framework is your guide to scaling more.
So let me give you something simple but powerful to implement right now. Here’s. Here’s a takeaway that I want you to get from this episode. Choose one person on your team whom you feel uncertain about. Notice how I said feel, not think. This is about really feeling.
15:10
Derek Fredrickson
If there’s a person on your team who that’s not aligned with your culture, with your vision, with your organization, and ask yourself, honestly, would I rehire them today? And are they set up for success in their current seat? For the long term, they may be set up for success in their current seat right now, today. And that’s fine. But I’m asking you to think about where you’re going. So think 6-12 months down the road. Are they set up for success in their current seat for where you are going, not just for where you are? If there’s hesitation, it’s a sign to dig deeper, realign, reposition, or make a change. Listen, this work isn’t always easy, but getting it right unlocks so much freedom, growth, and momentum for your business. And so before we wrap up, a couple of things.
16:02
Derek Fredrickson
If this episode hits home for you, about right people, right seats, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes and future insights, and maybe share it with a fellow business owner who’s building their dream team and not quite sure if they’re going about it in the right way. And maybe you’re wondering if your team structure is perhaps holding you back in your business growth. You can take our free quiz@the coosolution.com to get some amazing personalized insights not just about your team, but also about your business in general, around marketing and sales and operations and finance. That’s it for today. Thanks for tuning in to the COO Solution podcast. And until next time, keep scaling smarter.
