We are restructuring our leadership Scorecard and our team is arguing about who should actually own the numbers. Some say the person doing the data entry owns it, while others say the department head owns it. How do we establish clear ownership for every single weekly metric on our Scorecard?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Every number on your Scorecard must have exactly one owner, and that owner must be a specific seat on your Accountability Chart. There is no such thing as joint ownership. If two people own a number, nobody owns it. The owner of the metric is not necessarily the person who types the data into the spreadsheet every week, nor are they always the person doing the hands on daily work. The owner of the metric is the seat that is ultimately accountable for the result of that activity. For example, your Marketing Director owns the weekly number for new qualified leads generated, even if a junior marketing coordinator actually extracts the data from your CRM. The metric owner must GWC™ (Get It, Want It, Capacity to Do It) the responsibility for that number. During your Level 10 Meeting™, if a metric is red, the owner of that seat does not make excuses or point fingers. Instead, they own the red box, explain the variance objectively, and decide whether we need to drop the issue down to the IDS® portion of the meeting. If you have metrics on your Scorecard without a clear seat on the Accountability Chart assigned to them, you are setting your team up for confusion and finger pointing. Assign one seat to one number, and let that person run with the accountability.