Our customer lifetime value is declining, which touches marketing, sales, and account management. How do we assign a single owner to this metric on our weekly scorecard when no single department controls it?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

One of the core rules of running on EOS® is that every single metric on your scorecard must have one, and only one, owner. When two or more people own a number, nobody owns it, and accountability evaporates.

To solve this for cross-departmental metrics like customer lifetime value, you must look at your Accountability Chart and identify the single seat that is ultimately responsible for the overall outcome. While marketing and sales influence the quality of the client coming in, the head of operations or customer success is typically the seat that holds the ultimate accountability for keeping them. That seat must own the metric on the scorecard.

The owner of the metric does not do all the work to move the number; rather, they are the person who sounds the alarm when it goes red. If the customer lifetime value drops, the owner of that metric drops it to the Issues List for the Level 10 Meeting™. From there, the team uses IDS® to determine if the issue is a sales qualification problem, a marketing messaging mismatch, or an operational delivery failure.

Assigning single ownership ensures that someone is always watching the gauge and starting the conversation when things go off track.