Every CEO hesitates when they know a person is no longer right for the role. The hesitation feels harmless. It feels empathetic. It feels easier than confronting the truth. Adam Lieb, CEO of Gamesight, has lived through this more than once, and his conclusion is blunt: waiting always hurts the company more than acting.
He told me something every CEO has felt but rarely admits publicly.
“Never had to painfully let someone go where I was like, ‘Man, I’m so glad I waited as long as I did.’ Every single time you knew at an earlier stage and just made excuses.”
The decision you postpone becomes the problem you inherit.
A Team Built for One Stage Will Break in the Next
Companies rarely grow in a straight line. They jump, stretch, stall and accelerate in unpredictable waves. The team that fit perfectly at ten people may feel misaligned at thirty. By fifty, the role might demand a kind of precision or maturity the original hire never developed.
Adam has seen how emotional this shift can be for founders. They remember the early grind. They remember the late nights. Yet the role has changed even if the person has not.
“Some people are exactly who you need when you are fifteen people and they are not who you need when you are fifty. It is not a failure of them and it is not a failure of the company.”
Progress requires a new level of capability. The company will move on with or without your willingness to acknowledge that.
The CEO Must Give Up What They Do Well
Here is a twist most CEOs do not expect. Growth does not force you to abandon the tasks you hate. It forces you to abandon the tasks you love. Adam described this shift clearly.
“When you get good at something, that is the thing you have to stop doing. If I have gotten too comfortable with it, it is probably someone else’s job now.”
This is the moment many founders resist. Expertise becomes identity. Letting go feels like losing relevance. In reality, letting go is the step that frees the CEO to lead at the next level.
The Law Degree That Made Him a Better Operator
Adam’s JD gave him something unexpected. It trained him to compress information into structured clarity. That skill became essential as Gamesight scaled.
He explained the discipline he took from legal writing.
“I write really good, concise, to the point emails that focus on legally significant facts. My job is to take two thousand words and turn it into the three things that matter.”
A CEO who communicates clearly accelerates the entire company. One foggy message can slow ten people for a full week.
Focus Is Never the Problem. Protecting It Is.
When companies grow, people are not confused about their priorities. They are overwhelmed by the flood of competing tasks. It is the environment, not the intellect, that drags them off course.
Adam and I discussed how a few targeted questions often bring people back to what matters most. He sees this constantly.
“People know how to prioritize. They just do not spend their time in line with those priorities. A few questions usually get them to the right answer.”
The CEO’s role is not to repeat the strategic plan. It is to remove the noise that makes the plan impossible to execute.
Why Passion Still Matters in a Technical Company
Adam has been building in gaming since age eleven. That history gives him a level of enthusiasm that is difficult to fake. What surprised me was how present that passion still is among his employees.
He described it with a sense of pride.
“It is much easier to go to work every day when you are working in something you are interested in.”
Passion does not replace skill. It strengthens endurance. A team that genuinely loves the product shows up differently when the work becomes difficult.
AI Is Useful Until It Isn’t
Adam uses AI aggressively. Not as a replacement, but as a thought partner. It helps him summarize, draft, brainstorm and move faster. His frustration appears only when people treat AI output as final.
“Do not ask me to read your AI slop if you have not read it yourself.”
AI introduces leverage. It also introduces a new category of errors. A CEO needs people who use AI thoughtfully rather than blindly. The tool is not the risk. The user is.
Creativity Still Belongs to Humans
Some industries will adopt AI without tension. Gaming will not. Players expect something handcrafted. Something that feels authored. Adam believes AI will reshape parts of production, but he is wary of letting it take too much.
He pointed to unresolved copyright concerns.
“If the AI was trained on ten thousand trees from Fortnite, now you have stolen a tree from Fortnite and put it in your game.”
There is still a boundary where human imagination matters more than automation.
Final Takeaway
The hardest decision in leadership is not strategic. It is personal. When you know someone cannot succeed in the role ahead of them, your silence slows the entire company. Adam Lieb’s experience reminds us that decisive leadership protects both performance and culture.
- Waiting does not make the decision easier.
- It only makes it more expensive.
I am Glenn Gow and I coach CEOs who want to scale with conviction, clarity and disciplined leadership. On my podcast, I reveal the strategies top leaders use to grow faster by making the decisions they can no longer postpone
Listen to the full episode of The Scaling CEO with Adam Lieb to understand how decisive action strengthens your team, sharpens your leadership and preserves momentum.
