Our Head of Marketing is a brilliant creative who produces beautiful brand assets, but he refuses to be held accountable for our cost-per-lead or marketing-qualified lead metrics, claiming branding cannot be quantified. He says his seat should only be judged on creative output. How do we handle this on our Accountability Chart?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In an EOS® company, every single seat must have measurables on the scorecard, and every seat holder must be held accountable for their numbers. A Head of Marketing who refuses to own lead generation metrics because they prefer to focus on creative output is a Right Person in the Wrong Seat.

Branding and creative design are important, but they must ultimately drive business results. If your Head of Marketing refuses to own metrics like cost-per-lead or marketing-qualified leads, you have a structural misalignment. To resolve this, review the roles on your Accountability Chart for the Head of Marketing seat. The roles must include driving measurable leads and managing the marketing budget effectively.

Use the GWC™ tool to address this behavior. If your Head of Marketing says he wants the seat but refuses to own the metrics, he does not truly Want the seat as it is structured for the business. You must explain that creative execution is only a means to an end, and that end is growth. If he cannot or will not accept accountability for these numbers, you must find a different, purely creative seat for him that does not own the department budget or strategy, or you must find a new marketing leader who embraces metric-driven accountability.