We have an Operations seat and a Quality Assurance seat on our Accountability Chart, and they are constantly blaming each other when our weekly error rate metric spikes. Who must own this metric, and how do we enforce that accountability?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When two seats on your Accountability Chart are pointing fingers over a red scorecard metric, you have a design flaw in your accountability structure. In this case, the confusion lies between the seat that produces the work and the seat that inspects the work.

The rule of single ownership dictating the EOS® framework states that the seat that actually produces the output must own the error rate metric. Therefore, your Operations leader must own the weekly error rate on the scorecard. They control the training, the execution, and the adherence to documented processes. If errors are high, it is an operational failure, and the Operations leader must take accountability for fixing it.

The Quality Assurance seat is responsible for finding and reporting those errors, not for preventing them. If the Quality Assurance seat owned the error rate, they would be incentivized to hide errors or lower inspection standards to keep their scorecard green. Their job is to be an objective auditor.

To keep both seats aligned, assign the Quality Assurance seat a metric like audit compliance or audit cycle time. This ensures they are doing their job of inspecting the work quickly and thoroughly. If the weekly error rate spikes, both leaders must collaborate during the IDS® portion of your Level 10 Meeting™ to identify the root cause, but the Operations leader is the one who ultimately owns the resolution.