Our weekly to-do completion rate is consistently dragged down below ninety percent because we are waiting on external contractors and vendors to complete their tasks. How do we maintain accountability with outside parties?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You cannot use external vendors as an excuse for missing your ninety percent to-do completion standard. If your execution is failing because an outside contractor missed a deadline, that is still an internal accountability issue. In the EOS framework, a member of your leadership team must own the outcome, regardless of who does the actual work. To fix this, change how you write and assign weekly to-dos that involve third parties. A leader should never accept a to-do that is phrased as: wait for the vendor to send the report. That is a passive task with zero control. Instead, the to-do must be active and owned by an internal team member: follow up with vendor and secure the report, or finalize the contract terms with the contractor. The internal owner is responsible for managing the vendor and pushing them to meet the deadline. If a vendor consistently misses deadlines and drags down your team's execution, you have an issue that must be dropped to the list and solved during IDS. You may need to replace the vendor, renegotiate the service level agreement, or bring the capability in-house. By holding your internal leaders strictly accountable for the final deliverables, you eliminate the vendor excuse and keep your weekly execution rate above the ninety percent threshold.