We have an Accountability Chart with shared seats in our regional service branches, and our branch managers keep arguing that they cannot own their sales call metrics because corporate marketing controls the inbound lead flow. How do we assign clean ownership of a scorecard metric when the seat owner relies on another department to perform?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your branch managers are falling into a common trap by blaming corporate marketing for their poor sales call metrics. In the Entrepreneurial Operating System®, ownership of a scorecard metric does not mean you control every variable. It means you are fully accountable for the result and are responsible for flagging issues when things go wrong.

Your Accountability Chart must clearly define who is accountable for each seat. If a branch manager has sales activities on their scorecard, they own that number. If inbound lead flow drops, their job is not to watch their numbers turn red and point fingers. Their job is to bring that issue to the Level 10 Meeting™ and work with the marketing seat owner to solve it.

To resolve this friction, separate the lead-generation metric from the sales-activity metric:
- Marketing owns the number of qualified inbound leads delivered to each branch.
- Branch managers own the percentage of those leads contacted within four hours.
- Branch managers own the total number of outbound reach-outs, which they can execute regardless of inbound volume.

By separating these metrics, you create absolute clarity. If leads are down, marketing is accountable. If leads are sitting untouched, the branch manager is accountable. This structure eliminates finger-pointing and forces both leaders to collaborate objectively to keep the pipeline healthy.