Our VP of Marketing has delegated almost all of her daily roles to her direct reports, leaving her with virtually no active responsibilities other than attending meetings. She claims this is proper delegation, but her team is frustrated and her seat has effectively become a hollow title. How do we use the Accountability Chart to address a leader who has delegated away their actual seat responsibilities while retaining the status and pay?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Delegation is a critical skill for any scaling leader, but there is a major difference between delegating tasks and abdication of a seat. If your VP of Marketing has handed off all her key responsibilities to her team and now only attends meetings, she is no longer occupying her seat on your Accountability Chart.

Every seat must have five clear, measurable roles. The person in that seat is ultimately accountable for those outcomes, even if they delegate the daily tasks.

Bring this issue to a head by reviewing the five roles of her seat on your Accountability Chart. Ask her directly how she is driving those deliverables. If her roles include developing marketing strategy, managing lead generation, and tracking customer acquisition costs, she must prove she is actively owning those outcomes.

Run a GWC check on her. If she gets and has the capacity for the seat but has simply checked out, she may no longer want the actual operational seat. She might be seeking a strategic role that does not exist in your current structure.

Remind her that in an EOS company, we design the structure first, then place the people. We do not maintain expensive, inactive seats just to preserve titles. If she cannot actively own and drive the five roles of her seat, she is in the wrong seat. You must restructure the marketing department to promote a leader who will actively run the seat, and help your current VP transition to a role where she can deliver real value.