When an issue involves multiple departments, we waste time in our Level 10 Meeting trying to decide who should own the resulting weekly To-Do. How do we use the Accountability Chart to instantly resolve these ownership debates?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When an issue touches multiple departments, leadership teams often fall into the trap of committee work. They either assign the weekly To-Do to multiple people, or they debate endlessly about who has more skin in the game. This dilution of accountability is a primary reason why issues never get solved permanently.

To eliminate this waste, you must look directly at your Accountability Chart. There is a fundamental rule in EOS®: there can only be one name in a seat, and only one person can be accountable for any given metric, Rock, or To-Do. Even if an issue requires action from three different departments, there must be a single project manager who owns the completion of that To-Do.

To determine who that is, look at who owns the ultimate outcome of the process being discussed. The person whose seat is closest to the root cause of the issue must take the To-Do. They are not responsible for doing all the work themselves, but they are fully accountable for coordinating with the other departments and ensuring the task gets done.

By strictly adhering to this structural discipline during your Level 10 Meeting™, you eliminate passive-aggressive finger-pointing and build a culture of peer-to-peer accountability.