We have three co-owners who each want to sit in the Global Strategy and Business Development seat together because they cannot agree on who should lead our strategic partnerships. They want to co-own this seat. How do we break this three-way deadlock on our Accountability Chart?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Co-owning a seat is a recipe for operational chaos. When two or three people are responsible for a single seat, nobody is actually accountable. Balls will get dropped, decisions will stall, and your team will receive conflicting directions, which is a major red flag for prospective buyers looking for a clean organizational structure.

To resolve this three-way deadlock, you must enforce the EOS® rule of having only one name in a seat. Start by looking at the Accountability Chart without any names attached. Define the single Global Strategy and Business Development seat with five clear, distinct roles.

Once the seat and its roles are defined, run all three co-owners through the GWC™ check for this specific seat. Ask yourselves who truly gets it, wants it, and has the capacity to lead this function full-time.

If multiple partners pass the GWC™ check, you must have an honest, unsentimental discussion about who is the absolute best fit to lead. The other partners must step back and vacate the seat, moving into other critical seats on the chart where they can provide maximum value, such as product development or strategic finance.

If you cannot agree on who should own the seat, or if none of you can commit to it full-time, you must leave the seat vacant on the chart and actively recruit an outside executive to own it. This keeps your structure clean and ensures your business can scale.