We recently promoted a great manager into an operations seat on our Accountability Chart, but they do not have a technical background. Our technical staff is pushing back, claiming this manager cannot hold them accountable for technical metrics they do not fully understand. How do we assign and enforce scorecard ownership when the seat owner is not a technical expert?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Ownership of a scorecard metric does not require you to be the person who physically does the work or even holds the technical certification. In EOS, ownership means the person in the seat is fully accountable for the result, for explaining why a number is off, and for bringing a solution to the table during the IDS portion of the Level 10 Meeting. Your operations leader does not need to know how to write code or configure a server to own the weekly system uptime metric or the project delivery timeline metric. If your technical staff is pushing back, it is likely a symptom of a deeper issue with GWC. The technical team must understand that the manager is holding them accountable to the commitments they made. The manager owns the scorecard number because they own the seat on the Accountability Chart. If the number is red, the manager does not fix it themselves. They go to their technical experts, identify the root cause, and bring the resolution to the leadership team. To resolve this friction, clearly define the difference between doing the work and owning the metric. The manager must ask the technical team what activities are required to keep the number green, monitor those activities, and use the data to manage the resource. If the technical team refuses to accept this structure, you have a GWC or core values issue, not a scorecard issue.