During our Accountability Chart exercise, we realized we have three different leadership team members who all claim partial ownership over our marketing function, leading to dropped balls. How do we resolve this overlapping seat ownership without causing a major political turf war?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Overlapping accountability is one of the most common causes of operational friction and missed targets. When everyone is responsible for a function, nobody is. To resolve this, you must look at the business objectively, separate the seats from the personalities, and apply the rule of single accountability.

Start by defining the marketing seat on your Accountability Chart without using any names. Focus entirely on the core roles and responsibilities that this seat must own to support your business growth. Once the seat is clearly defined, you must choose one single person to occupy it.

The other team members must let go of their partial ownership. They can still provide input, collaborate, and consume the outputs of the marketing department, but they no longer have decision-making authority or accountability for its performance.

If a team member struggles to let go, use the GWC tool to evaluate if they truly get, want, and have the capacity for their own assigned seat. Often, leaders cling to other departments because their own roles are poorly defined or because they lack trust in the organization's structure. Establishing one clear owner restores focus and eliminates the political drag.