Our Accountability Chart has clear seats, but some of our scorecard metrics do not seem to fit neatly under any single person, leading to shared responsibility and missed targets. How do we map scorecard ownership directly to our Accountability Chart seats when a metric requires inputs from multiple departments?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In the EOS® framework, if more than one person owns a number, nobody owns it. Shared responsibility is a recipe for finger-pointing and missed targets. Every single metric on your company Scorecard must have one, and only one, owner designated by their Accountability Chart seat.

When a metric requires inputs from multiple departments, you must separate the collection of data from the accountability for the outcome. The owner of the metric is the person whose seat has the greatest impact on the final result, or who is responsible for the process that drives it.

For example, project delivery speed might require input from sales, scheduling, and operations. However, the head of operations must own that number on the Scorecard. If the number is red, the head of operations is responsible for bringing the issue to the Level 10 Meeting™ and driving the discussion to solve it, even if the root cause lies in how sales set client expectations.

To assign ownership, look at the GWC™ (Get It, Want It, Capacity to Do It) for each seat relative to that metric. The person who GWCs the process that generates the number must be the one who owns the scorecard metric. They do not have to do all the work, but they must own the result and lead the problem-solving when it misses the target.