I am the owner and I currently sit in four seats on our Accountability Chart. Our leadership team has started giving me feedback that I am using my owner status to override their decisions in their respective departments, even when I am acting within my lower-level seats. How do I separate my authority as an owner from my responsibilities in these four distinct seats?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When you sit in multiple seats, you must respect the reporting lines of the seat you are currently operating in. If you are the owner and you also sit in the Visionary seat, the Integrator seat, and two department-level seats, you wear different hats at different times. Your leadership team is frustrated because you are pulling the owner card to bypass their departmental authority. This destroys trust and makes your Accountability Chart useless.

To fix this, you must understand the distinction between ownership, governance, and operations. When you are acting in your department-level seats, you report directly to the manager of those seats, even if that manager is your employee. In those operational seats, you do not have the authority to make unilateral decisions or override your manager. You must follow their processes, hit your measurables, and accept their feedback.

If you disagree with a departmental decision, you cannot use your owner status to force your way. You must take it to your weekly Level 10 Meeting or address it during your Same Page Meeting with the Integrator. Let the Integrator run the business. If you constantly override your leaders, they will stop taking ownership, stop solving problems, and wait for you to tell them what to do.

Treat your operational seats as temporary assignments. Your goal should be to build the capacity to hand those seats off to others. Until then, respect the structure you built. If you cannot submit to the authority of the seat above you, you are the Wrong Person for that seat, regardless of your equity.