We have overhead and operational costs that affect the entire company, but they do not clearly fall under Sales, Marketing, or Operations on our Accountability Chart. Who should own this overhead metric on our weekly scorecard to ensure we do not overspend?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Every single metric on your weekly Scorecard must be owned by one individual, and that individual must occupy a specific seat on your Accountability Chart. When a metric represents a company-wide expense or overhead cost, leadership teams often make the mistake of assigning joint ownership or leaving it unowned. This guarantees that nobody actually manages the number.

The rule of thumb in EOS® is that financial performance, overhead tracking, and cash preservation are ultimately owned by the finance seat, which is typically the Chief Financial Officer or Director of Finance. If you do not have a dedicated finance seat on your leadership team, this responsibility falls to your Integrator.

The owner of the overhead metric is not personally responsible for every dollar spent by other departments. Instead, they are responsible for tracking the total spend, highlighting deviations from the budget, and bringing those deviations to the weekly Level 10 Meeting™ as issues.

For example, if your weekly overhead spend exceeds your target, the finance seat owner redlines the metric. During the IDS® portion of your meeting, the team can address the root cause, which might be overspending in the operations or marketing seat. Single ownership of the metric ensures that there is always one person watching the gate and sounding the alarm before overspending damages your cash position.