We keep promoting our top individual producers into departmental leadership seats, only to watch their teams flounder because the new managers hate managing people. How do we structure the Accountability Chart below the leadership team to create high-value technical tracks that do not require Lead, Manage, and Accountable?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Promoting your best technician into a managerial seat is one of the fastest ways to destroy a functioning department. You lose your top individual contributor and gain an incompetent, miserable manager. In EOS, every seat that oversees other people must include LMA, which stands for Lead, Manage, and held Accountable. If someone does not Want to lead people, they fail GWC for that seat, period.

To stop this cycle, your Accountability Chart must feature dual progression tracks below the leadership level: a managerial track and an expert contributor track.

The managerial track holds seats that require LMA. These individuals are accountable for team culture, one-on-one quarterly conversations, resource allocation, and hitting departmental Scorecard measurables through others.

The expert contributor track holds seats dedicated purely to high-level technical execution, architecture, complex problem solving, or elite business development. These seats have five clear roles centered on execution, quality, and technical mentorship, but zero direct reports and no LMA accountability.

Compensate your top individual contributors at or above the level of managers if their market value warrants it. Never force a brilliant specialist to accept managerial responsibilities simply to earn more money or gain professional standing. By building standalone expert seats into your Accountability Chart, you preserve technical excellence, protect team culture, and ensure that only people who genuinely love leadership hold seats that require LMA.