"History is the study of surprises." This line from history professor Edward T. O'Donnell captures the world in which we live. 

We're living history, surprise after surprise after surprise. And just when we think we've had all the big surprises for a while, along comes another one.

If the first two decades of the twenty-first century have taught us anything, it's that uncertainty is chronic; instability is permanent; disruption is common; and we can neither predict nor govern events. 

There will be no "new normal"; there will only be a continuous series of "not normal" episodes, defying prediction and unforeseen by most of us until they happen. 

And that means doubling down on the "first who" principle. If you're going to climb a big, scary mountain that's never been climbed before, your best hedge against unexpected obstacles is making sure you have the right partners on the other end of the rope, people who can adapt to whatever you encounter on the mountain. 

Even the most visionary among us cannot always predict which ideas will work. And no one can reliably predict what the future will throw at us or even what's coming just around the corner.

When you have your weekly or monthly or quarterly management team meetings, what's the number one, first-priority metric you look at? Is it sales? Or profitability? Or cash flow? Or something about products or service levels?

Or some other metric? 

Whatever your answer, there's one metric that towers above all others, one metric to track with obsession, one metric upon which the greatness of the entire enterprise hinges. And yet, ironically, for most companies, it's rarely the metric first discussed—if it's discussed at all. 

However, to build a truly great and lasting company, it must rise to the top. And what's that metric? The percentage of key seats on the bus filled with the right people for those seats. 

Stop and think: What percentage of your key seats do you have filled with the right people? If your answer is less than 90%, you ve just identified your number one priority. To build a truly great company, you'll need to strive for having 90% of your key seats filled with the right people.

Why not 100% of your key seats filled with the right people? At any given moment, there's a very high likelihood that at least some key seats will be temporarily unfilled. It could also be that you've only recently moved someone into a key seat, and you don't yet know how well that person will perform in that seat. And in some cases, the demands of a key seat have grown faster than the capabilities of the person in that seat.

What makes for a key seat? Any seat meeting any one of the following three conditions qualifies as key:

The question of whom to put in key seats becomes crucial when you cannot easily get people off your bus. 

Consider the following scenario: You have a person in a key seat who's doing a good but not great job. You like this person. You really want this person to succeed. You've invested time and energy in this person. But the fact is that you're not yet seeing the A-level performance you need in the seat. 

When facing this situation, which way do you tilt-toward investing more to develop the person or toward acting decisively to replace the person? (Note: Replacing the person doesn't necessarily mean kicking him or her off the bus; you might move the person to a different seat.)

There's no single right answer. Looking across the best leaders we've studied, we see about a 50/50 split between those who tilted toward develop and those who tilted toward replace. 

For example, here are ten of the best corporate leaders in history, five of whom tilted toward developing people and five of whom tilted toward replacing people when they were struggling to deliver superior performance in key seats:

Tilted toward Develop 

Anne Mulcahy, Xerox 

Bill Hewlett, HP

Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines

J. W. Marriott, Marriott 

William McKnight, 3M

Katharine Graham, The Washington Post 

Andy Grove, Intel 

Ken Iverson, Nucor

Peter Lewis, Progressive Insurance 

George Rathmann, Amgen

Which of the following two categories of mistakes have you more frequently made? 

Category 1: In retrospect, you waited too long before you acted to move the person ut of the key seat. 

Category 2: In retrospect, you acted too quickly and you hould have been more patient. 

Stop and think: Which mistake do you make more frequently? 

In response to this question, the vast majority of hands go up for Category 1, waiting too long before taking decisive action.

Still, the fact remains that every organization struggles with the tension between developing people and replacing people in key seats.

How do you know when it is time to make the shift from develop to replace?

When you have decide to replace someone be rigorous, not ruthless. Be direct and straightforward but with respect. 

"History is the study of surprises." This line from history professor Edward T. O'Donnell captures the world in which we live. 

We're living history, surprise after surprise after surprise. And just when we think we've had all the big surprises for a while, along comes another one.

If the first two decades of the twenty-first century have taught us anything, it's that uncertainty is chronic; instability is permanent; disruption is common; and we can neither predict nor govern events. 

There will be no "new normal"; there will only be a continuous series of "not normal" episodes, defying prediction and unforeseen by most of us until they happen. 

And that means doubling down on the "first who" principle. If you're going to climb a big, scary mountain that's never been climbed before, your best hedge against unexpected obstacles is making sure you have the right partners on the other end of the rope, people who can adapt to whatever you encounter on the mountain. 

Even the most visionary among us cannot always predict which ideas will work. And no one can reliably predict what the future will throw at us or even what's coming just around the corner.

When you have your weekly or monthly or quarterly management team meetings, what's the number one, first-priority metric you look at? Is it sales? Or profitability? Or cash flow? Or something about products or service levels?

Or some other metric? 

Whatever your answer, there's one metric that towers above all others, one metric to track with obsession, one metric upon which the greatness of the entire enterprise hinges. And yet, ironically, for most companies, it's rarely the metric first discussed—if it's discussed at all. 

However, to build a truly great and lasting company, it must rise to the top. And what's that metric? The percentage of key seats on the bus filled with the right people for those seats. 

Stop and think: What percentage of your key seats do you have filled with the right people? If your answer is less than 90%, you ve just identified your number one priority. To build a truly great company, you'll need to strive for having 90% of your key seats filled with the right people.

Why not 100% of your key seats filled with the right people? At any given moment, there's a very high likelihood that at least some key seats will be temporarily unfilled. It could also be that you've only recently moved someone into a key seat, and you don't yet know how well that person will perform in that seat. And in some cases, the demands of a key seat have grown faster than the capabilities of the person in that seat.

What makes for a key seat? Any seat meeting any one of the following three conditions qualifies as key:

The question of whom to put in key seats becomes crucial when you cannot easily get people off your bus. 

Consider the following scenario: You have a person in a key seat who's doing a good but not great job. You like this person. You really want this person to succeed. You've invested time and energy in this person. But the fact is that you're not yet seeing the A-level performance you need in the seat. 

When facing this situation, which way do you tilt-toward investing more to develop the person or toward acting decisively to replace the person? (Note: Replacing the person doesn't necessarily mean kicking him or her off the bus; you might move the person to a different seat.)

There's no single right answer. Looking across the best leaders we've studied, we see about a 50/50 split between those who tilted toward develop and those who tilted toward replace. 

For example, here are ten of the best corporate leaders in history, five of whom tilted toward developing people and five of whom tilted toward replacing people when they were struggling to deliver superior performance in key seats:

Tilted toward Develop 

Anne Mulcahy, Xerox 

Bill Hewlett, HP

Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines

J. W. Marriott, Marriott 

William McKnight, 3M

Katharine Graham, The Washington Post 

Andy Grove, Intel 

Ken Iverson, Nucor

Peter Lewis, Progressive Insurance 

George Rathmann, Amgen

Which of the following two categories of mistakes have you more frequently made? 

Category 1: In retrospect, you waited too long before you acted to move the person ut of the key seat. 

Category 2: In retrospect, you acted too quickly and you hould have been more patient. 

Stop and think: Which mistake do you make more frequently? 

In response to this question, the vast majority of hands go up for Category 1, waiting too long before taking decisive action.

Still, the fact remains that every organization struggles with the tension between developing people and replacing people in key seats.

How do you know when it is time to make the shift from develop to replace?

When you have decide to replace someone be rigorous, not ruthless. Be direct and straightforward but with respect. 

"History is the study of surprises." This line from history professor Edward T. O'Donnell captures the world in which we live. 

We're living history, surprise after surprise after surprise. And just when we think we've had all the big surprises for a while, along comes another one.

If the first two decades of the twenty-first century have taught us anything, it's that uncertainty is chronic; instability is permanent; disruption is common; and we can neither predict nor govern events. 

There will be no "new normal"; there will only be a continuous series of "not normal" episodes, defying prediction and unforeseen by most of us until they happen. 

And that means doubling down on the "first who" principle. If you're going to climb a big, scary mountain that's never been climbed before, your best hedge against unexpected obstacles is making sure you have the right partners on the other end of the rope, people who can adapt to whatever you encounter on the mountain. 

Even the most visionary among us cannot always predict which ideas will work. And no one can reliably predict what the future will throw at us or even what's coming just around the corner.

When you have your weekly or monthly or quarterly management team meetings, what's the number one, first-priority metric you look at? Is it sales? Or profitability? Or cash flow? Or something about products or service levels?

Or some other metric? 

Whatever your answer, there's one metric that towers above all others, one metric to track with obsession, one metric upon which the greatness of the entire enterprise hinges. And yet, ironically, for most companies, it's rarely the metric first discussed—if it's discussed at all. 

However, to build a truly great and lasting company, it must rise to the top. And what's that metric? The percentage of key seats on the bus filled with the right people for those seats. 

Stop and think: What percentage of your key seats do you have filled with the right people? If your answer is less than 90%, you ve just identified your number one priority. To build a truly great company, you'll need to strive for having 90% of your key seats filled with the right people.

Why not 100% of your key seats filled with the right people? At any given moment, there's a very high likelihood that at least some key seats will be temporarily unfilled. It could also be that you've only recently moved someone into a key seat, and you don't yet know how well that person will perform in that seat. And in some cases, the demands of a key seat have grown faster than the capabilities of the person in that seat.

What makes for a key seat? Any seat meeting any one of the following three conditions qualifies as key:

The question of whom to put in key seats becomes crucial when you cannot easily get people off your bus. 

Consider the following scenario: You have a person in a key seat who's doing a good but not great job. You like this person. You really want this person to succeed. You've invested time and energy in this person. But the fact is that you're not yet seeing the A-level performance you need in the seat. 

When facing this situation, which way do you tilt-toward investing more to develop the person or toward acting decisively to replace the person? (Note: Replacing the person doesn't necessarily mean kicking him or her off the bus; you might move the person to a different seat.)

There's no single right answer. Looking across the best leaders we've studied, we see about a 50/50 split between those who tilted toward develop and those who tilted toward replace. 

For example, here are ten of the best corporate leaders in history, five of whom tilted toward developing people and five of whom tilted toward replacing people when they were struggling to deliver superior performance in key seats:

Tilted toward Develop 

Anne Mulcahy, Xerox 

Bill Hewlett, HP

Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines

J. W. Marriott, Marriott 

William McKnight, 3M

Katharine Graham, The Washington Post 

Andy Grove, Intel 

Ken Iverson, Nucor

Peter Lewis, Progressive Insurance 

George Rathmann, Amgen

Which of the following two categories of mistakes have you more frequently made? 

Category 1: In retrospect, you waited too long before you acted to move the person ut of the key seat. 

Category 2: In retrospect, you acted too quickly and you hould have been more patient. 

Stop and think: Which mistake do you make more frequently? 

In response to this question, the vast majority of hands go up for Category 1, waiting too long before taking decisive action.

Still, the fact remains that every organization struggles with the tension between developing people and replacing people in key seats.

How do you know when it is time to make the shift from develop to replace?

When you have decide to replace someone be rigorous, not ruthless. Be direct and straightforward but with respect.