The Accountability Chart and the Three Major Functions

No matter how great your people are, if the organization doesn’t have the right structure in place, you’ll never grow to the next level and gain traction on the business. The Accountability Chart is a powerful tool that helps business owners get the right structure in place, by forcing leadership teams to look at their organization in a completely different way, and to address the people issues that have been holding them back.

A business coach or EOS Implementer™ will tell you that there isn’t a magical formula or a perfect way to structure an organization. Instead, the Accountability Chart identifies the three major business functions that exist in every organization. Each of these key areas must be operating at their optimum level in order to be successful, while also working together to maintain harmony. Having the key areas of Sales and Marketing, Operations and Finance strong lets business owners grow. If any of these areas becomes weak, the organization as a whole will suffer.

Using the Accountability Chart, a business coach or EOS Implementer helps managers and leadership teams identify who is currently in charge of each individual area. Only one person can be in charge of each area in order to maintain accountability throughout the leadership team, however, when leadership teams first fill out the Accountability Chart, they often end up with more than one name under each heading. If this happens to you, it may be why your company hasn’t been experiencing growth and why you may be noticing conflict within the business. The only way to solve this problem is by reducing the number of names to one – one person who is accountable for that particular business function.

When customizing the Accountability Chart for an organization, business coaches and EOS Implementers might find it necessary to split the three major functions into smaller groups. For example, sales and marketing may split into a distinct sales function and a district marketing function. Depending on the size and scope of your organization, you will end up with anywhere from 3- 10 major functions – although no EOS client has ever had more than seven.