We have a critical but highly stressful customer escalations and billing disputes seat that is currently a hot potato. Nobody on our leadership team wants to own it or manage the person who sits in it. How do we assign accountability for an undesirable but business-critical seat?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

An unowned seat on your Accountability Chart is a ticking time bomb. When accountability is shared or avoided, performance defaults to the lowest common denominator, resulting in dropped balls and customer churn.

To solve this, you must apply the EOS® rule of structure first, people second. Do not look at who is currently on your team. Instead, look at the logical flow of your business operations. Customer escalations and billing disputes are fundamentally operational and financial issues.

Ask yourself where this function naturally lives to protect the client experience and cash flow. In most structures, customer escalations belong under Operations, while billing disputes belong reportable to Finance. If you must keep them in a single seat, that seat must report to a major function on your leadership team, typically Operations.

Once you define the seat and place it under a leadership team member, that leader is accountable for it. They do not have to do the daily work themselves, but they must manage the person who does. If a leadership team member refuses to manage a seat because it is stressful or unpleasant, you have a GWC™ issue on your leadership team.

Every leader must have the capacity and willingness to own all the seats in their department. Use the IDS® process during your next weekly Level 10 Meeting™ to address this operational avoidance head-on. Decide who is the right leader to own this function, define the five core roles clearly, and hold them accountable to managing it.