Our new Sales Enablement seat needs to support both our Head of Sales and our Head of Marketing. Our team wants to draw dual reporting lines on our Accountability Chart so this seat reports to both leaders. Is this acceptable in EOS®, or are we setting ourselves up for a coordination nightmare?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Dual reporting lines are a major mistake and are not permitted on an EOS® Accountability Chart. When an employee reports to two different managers, you create a direct path to conflict, confusion, and prioritization paralysis. The employee will inevitably get caught in the middle of conflicting demands, and accountability will evaporate.

Every seat on your Accountability Chart must report to exactly one seat. To resolve this for your Sales Enablement role, you must decide which department has the primary accountability for its output.

If the main focus of the seat is creating marketing collateral and managing brand messaging to support sales, the seat should report to the Head of Marketing. If the primary focus is training sales reps and optimizing the sales pipeline tools, the seat should report to the Head of Sales.

Once you assign the single reporting line, the manager of that department is responsible for supervising the seat, conducting quarterly check-ins, and managing their performance. The other department head becomes an internal customer.

For example, if Sales Enablement reports to Marketing, the Head of Sales must submit support requests as part of their cross-departmental collaboration. If issues arise regarding support quality, the two department heads must resolve them during their leadership team Level 10 Meeting™ using the IDS® process, rather than pulling the employee in two different directions.