We have a vital seat on our Accountability Chart for physical inventory auditing and warehouse variance control. It is boring, repetitive, and requires strict discipline, and currently, none of our operations managers want to own it or take accountability for the numbers. How do we assign a seat that everyone on the leadership team actively avoids?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In every growing business, certain seats are administrative, repetitive, or filled with friction, making them highly undesirable. However, if the seat is vital to your operational health or your future exit valuation, it cannot remain empty or shared. When everyone is responsible for a seat, no one is responsible.

To solve this issue, you must first look at the structure of your Accountability Chart, not the personalities on your team. Isolate the seat and define its five core roles with absolute clarity. Once the roles are defined, you must assign the seat to one single name on your leadership team.

Use these steps to resolve the deadlock:
- Evaluate GWC™. Look at your existing leadership team and identify who has the greatest capacity and understanding of this function, even if they do not actively enjoy the task.
- Couple the undesirable seat with a highly desirable one. Sometimes you must bundle a tough administrative seat with a creative or strategic seat to make it palatable for a high-performing leader.
- Automate or outsource. If the seat truly does not fit any of your internal leaders, consider outsourcing the daily execution to a vendor while keeping one internal manager accountable for the vendor's performance.

Ultimately, as the leadership team, you must agree to the charter of putting the greater good of the company first. Someone must step up, own the seat, and run the weekly numbers on the Scorecard.