Our operations team is completely resistant to owning our physical inventory auditing and quality control validation seat because it is incredibly tedious. How do we assign accountability for this seat when nobody on our current team wants to touch it?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

An unowned seat is a structural hazard. When inventory validation is ignored because it is tedious, your exit valuation takes a hit. Buyers discount operations with sloppy books. You cannot leave this seat vacant or assign it as a loose team effort.

Start by treating the seat as a blank slate. Map out the five major roles for this seat on your Accountability Chart. Do not write names in yet. Keep the focus entirely on what the business needs to deliver clean inventory data.

Once the roles are clear, run a GWC™ evaluation on your current team members. If you find someone who gets it and has the capacity but genuinely does not want it, do not force them into it. Forcing a seat on someone who does not want it leads to disengaged employees and sloppy execution.

If no one on your current team gets, wants, and has the capacity for the seat, you have an open seat. You must look outside the organization. Hire a dedicated resource or contract a third party specialist to own the seat.

Another option is to leverage automation. If you can automate sixty percent of the manual verification, the remaining tasks might easily fit into an existing operations seat.

The nonnegotiable rule of the Accountability Chart is that every seat must have one name, and that person must want the seat. If you have an unowned seat, it is an unresolved issue. Put it on your issues list, run IDS®, and make the hard decision to hire or restructure.