Table of Contents

The Demand

The next time a seat opens in your building, you check whether you are defaulting to free agency because you have a hiring problem, or because you never built the person who should have filled it. If it is the latter, hiring from outside again just repeats the failure — it does not fix it.

The Work

  1. Look at your last three open seats above cast member. For each one, identify whether it was filled from inside or outside.
  2. For every seat filled from outside, ask honestly: was there a cast member being read for capacity and taught the next verb before the seat opened, or did the opening trigger the search.
  3. If no one was being developed, that is a Mastery Game failure, not a labor-market problem. Name it as that.
  4. This week, pick one open or soon-to-open seat and identify the internal cast member you should be reading for capacity right now.
  5. Start teaching that person the next verb this week — a specific skill of the next rung, not a vague mentorship.

This week, you name one seat you would otherwise fill from outside and start building the internal cast member who should fill it instead.