We are preparing for an acquisition and the buyers require a complete physical asset tag and hardware audit. This requires a temporary Physical Asset Audit seat on our Accountability Chart, but all my leadership team members are passing the buck because they find it tedious and outside their digital comfort zones. How do we fill this critical, unwanted seat?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Every company preparing for an acquisition faces tedious, unappealing tasks that must live in a seat on the Accountability Chart. When everyone on the leadership team evades a seat, it usually means the roles are poorly defined or the accountability is shared, which means nobody is actually accountable.

First, define the seat with absolute clarity on the Accountability Chart. List three to five specific, measurable roles for this temporary Physical Asset Audit seat. Do not bury these roles inside another major seat where they will be ignored.

Second, look at your existing team through the lens of GWC. Even if the seat is tedious, someone must have the capacity and ability to oversee it. If you cannot find an internal leader who gets, wants, and has the capacity to own this seat, you have two options.

You can assign the ultimate accountability for the seat to a leadership team member, such as your Integrator, who then delegates the actual execution to a junior employee or an external contractor. The leader is still accountable for the seat being successfully executed.

Alternatively, you can hire a temporary project manager specifically for this seat. Do not force an existing leader who does not GWC the seat to own it, or the audit will fail, delaying your exit.