How Compass Gets Complex Projects Done on Time

Everyone wants to get more done in less time. Yet when people collaborate, they often encounter a series of common problems: Confusion over who is responsible for what; friction between teams or departments; a single roadblock halting progress completely.

At Compass, the real estate technology company I lead that is now the largest independent brokerage in the country, we’ve successfully implemented a practice called “SPOA” — Single Point of Accountability — to directly address these challenges.

It’s a deceptively simple and surprisingly powerful idea. To help you put the SPOA role into practice in your organization, let me first share where the concept came from — and how it’s distinct from other well-known accountability structures.

When I Realized We Had a Problem

As Compass grew from a dozen employees in one city to tens of thousands of real estate agents and employees serving over 300 cities in the U.S., I noticed that people were spending more time figuring out what work to do and less time actually doing work that delivered results. The company had multiplied in complexity, employees became increasingly specialized, and most projects required participation from multiple departments with multiple priorities.  As a result, our pace and our progress had slowed — but it took me a little while to understand exactly why.

Our biggest obstacle became clear to me during a routine conversation with two colleagues from our legal and finance teams. We were negotiating a partnership with another company, and I asked for an update on the deal terms. I had already inquired a few times over email but hadn’t gotten a clear answer. So when the three of us had the chance to get in a room together, I asked directly: “What’s going on? Have we finalized the deal terms yet?”

One of them said, “We are going back and forth with the other side, but we expect to have an answer soon.”

Frustrated by the lack of detail, I said, “Who’s ‘we’? I don’t understand who is doing what. Specifically.”

There was a brief silence. As it turned out, each of them thought that the other person was going to answer. Throughout the project, their desire to be collaborative led to them deferring to each other. The project had fallen behind schedule because neither employee felt singularly responsible for pushing it forward. They were often waiting for each other’s emails, creating unnecessary bottlenecks and delays.

This situation made a few things clear to me. First, it wasn’t their fault — it was mine for not yet creating a viable system of accountability. Second, this wasn’t an isolated issue; it was happening in hundreds of ways across the company.

To get the partnership done, I assigned one of the two employees to be singularly responsible for completing it. We closed the deal within the week. And we’ve been using the SPOA approach ever since.

How Does SPOA Work?

For every project that requires collaboration across multiple teams, we assign one person to be the SPOA. They’re responsible for driving it forward, clearing blockers, clarifying confusion, delegating tasks, and solving problems. Of course, they don’t have to do the entire project themselves — but they do need to make sure it gets done and that everyone’s responsibilities are clear. And when anyone needs an update on a project, the SPOA is the person who can and should answer.

A good SPOA delivers clarity to anyone else who’s unsure of their role. They enable others to focus, because everyone knows that the SPOA is obsessing over the progress and success of that overall project so they don’t have to. And by being constantly aware of every step of a project, a SPOA can spot patterns and deliver insights about what is working and how to improve the process in the future.

How Is This Accountability System Distinct?

Unlike a project manager, SPOA is not a job title or long-term role — rather, every time there’s a new project or initiative that doesn’t fit neatly into an existing department or job description, we identify a SPOA to drive it to completion. And unlike account management or customer success roles, SPOAs are empowered to do whatever it takes to get a project done. The SPOA’s job is not to absorb client dissatisfaction and communicate it internally.  They’re genuinely responsible for delivering results and are expected to marshal the resources they need to do so. The role changes from project to project, initiative to initiative, depending on the given needs.

The SPOA role is perhaps closest to the “accountable” role in a RACI matrix — a project management framework designed to help clarify roles and responsibilities  — but much simpler and clearer, which makes it more likely the practice will spread organically through your organization.

5 Key Factors of the SPOA Approach

While the basic idea is easy to understand, we’ve learned a number of lessons over the years about when and how to deploy the SPOA role to the greatest effect.

1. Cross-team initiatives need a SPOA. For example, every time we launch Compass in a new city, we assign a SPOA to oversee the expansion. Launches like these require close collaboration from a half-dozen departments, making a SPOA essential. 
2. New and novel projects need a SPOA. The first time we reported quarterly earnings as a public company, we knew we’d face process obstacles and communications challenges, since we’d never done it before. It was clear that the SPOA should be our head of investor relations. In this case, our SPOA for the overall initiative decided to designate sub-SPOAs for each key metric we had to report.
3. SPOAs must be empowered. In too many contexts, project managers lack the influence they need to hit deadlines and drive results. To succeed, a SPOA needs to be able to assign work to collaborators over whom they have no managerial authority and to request resources from management to stay on track. The ad-hoc nature of the role helps here, since anyone could end up being a SPOA. As such, you can take existing hierarchies into account when naming SPOAs for mission-critical projects, and empower those SPOAs to operate with authority in their project-specific contexts.
4. The SPOA has to be a great communicator, but not necessarily an expert. The most important skill is being able to synthesize disparate information and clearly say, “Here’s what I’m seeing, here’s where we’re doing well, here’s where we’re not, and here’s what I need from you in order to hit our goal.”
5. Don’t wait to assign a SPOA. If you get to the point in a project where you realize it really should have had a SPOA, it’s already too late. By that point, the effort is likely behind schedule and mired in confusion and frustration — which makes it much more difficult to get someone excited about taking on the SPOA role. One helpful rule of thumb: if you think a project might need a SPOA, it almost definitely needs a SPOA.

No one succeeds alone — in life or in business; collaboration is vital to progress. But it’s difficult for even the most collaborative people to work together effectively if they don’t understand who’s ultimately accountable. The Single Point of Accountability approach accelerates progress, reduces confusion, and facilitates efficient collaboration. Designating a SPOA might not solve all of your problems, but it does free everyone up to maximize their strengths and deliver results.