Two workers in the Operations Department of a company were working one Friday evening to push out a late delivery. One saw a problem about to happen and said to the other, “Look at that! We can’t ship this out. This order is not correct.”

“You’re right,” said the other, “But neither one of us can fix it. Nobody can fix it until Monday. The boss told us to get this shipment out tonight, and we’ll get yelled at if we don’t. Remember what he did the last time something like this happened?”

So out the order went, and in came an angry customer complaint two days later when the order was delivered. And then out went a chunk of the profits from the order because it cost the company three times as much to fix the error than it would have to get it right the first time.

Recently, Gino Wickman and I were honored to be guests of Dan Sullivan on his very popular podcast, Inside Strategic Coach. For those of you who don't know Dan yet, he's helped thousands of entrepreneurs improve their businesses and their lives through his Strategic Coach program. Gino has been enrolled in Strategic Coach for nearly twenty years, and credits Dan and his program with helping clarify his vision, and conceive of and then work to build EOS Worldwide with our friend and partner, Don Tinney.

Creating the Accountability Chart with the help of an EOS^® Implementer helps leadership teams identify who is accountable for what, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the right people are in the right seats. Before you move people into new roles or start hiring new members of the team, you need to start by evaluating whether people GWC the seat – Get it, Want it and have the Capacity to do it.

Rocks are just priorities — the 3 to 7 most important things you must accomplish in the next ninety days. Company rocks are priorities for the company, departmental rocks are priorities for your department, and individual rocks are priorities for you or another individual. As simple as that sounds, it’s easy to overcomplicate rocks.

There is no magic formula for what constitutes a rock— it’s simply a priority that will take longer than 7 days (those action items are To-Dos) and up to ninety days to complete.

Here are a few questions I get asked often in sessions, with corresponding answers.

If you’re like most small to medium sized entrepreneurial companies, you’ve probably tried to visually display how your company is structured or organized. So what’s the best way to do that – with an accountability chart or an organizational chart? What’s the difference?

Organizational charts are focused on who reports to who, but they they typically don’t address one of the major issues most companies struggle with: a lack of clarity around what the major functions of the organization are, and who is accountable for what.

Accountability charts provide clarity about who owns the major functions of an organization and identifies the primary roles and responsibilities for which they are accountable.