Our sales director wants to put weekly rep prospecting calls on the company Scorecard, but refuses to personally own the number because she does not dial the phone. Who must own a Scorecard measurable on the Accountability Chart when downstream staff do the work?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Single-point accountability is non-negotiable on an EOS Scorecard. Every measurable must have exactly one owner who sits in a seat on your Accountability Chart. That owner is not necessarily the person doing the manual task; they are the leader accountable for the outcome and the standard.

If your sales director manages the team responsible for outbound prospecting, she owns the outbound prospecting measurable on the leadership team Scorecard. Her job is to ensure her people have the training, tools, and expectations required to hit the weekly target. If the reps fail to make the dials, the sales director missed her number.

The rationale is straightforward. If a department head can disown a number because frontline workers execute the activity, leadership ceases to exist. Leadership means owning the collective results of your function.

On departmental scorecards, individual sales reps should own their individual call numbers. But when rolled up to the leadership team Scorecard, the sales director owns the total aggregate number. When the aggregate number falls below the weekly goal, the sales director does not blame her reps. She marks it red, drops it down to the Issues List during the Level 10 Meeting, and works with the leadership team to IDS the root cause, whether that is poor training, broken lists, or performance management.