Increase Accountability

by Howard Shore, Date: Mar 04, 2013

Accountability in Business

Accountability is a culture, process, and systems issue. After conducting many surveys about corporate culture, the number one issue we have found across the organizational spectrum is “accountability.” In general, we find that employees do not think they or their colleagues are effectively held accountable for their responsibilities and actions. I have found that accountability is typically weak among partners, owners, and executive teams. This is usually because these groups allow relationships to take precedence over the best interests of the organization.

Measuring Accountability

By and large, accountability processes and systems exist and are not working properly. We find several of the processes lacking in real depth. In many cases, leadership does not enforce policy related to tools that were designed to hold others responsible.

For example, the most effective way to hold salespeople accountable is to measure the daily activities that lead to sales. Many companies have experienced tremendous difficulty in enforcing adequate usage of the CRM. In our experience, when it is mandatory, salespeople provide the data, and management monitors and takes appropriate action as a result of the information provided. Failure to do so is causing most companies to miss a lot of opportunities as a result.

Lack of Accountability in the Workplace

Success comes from executing the right plans, not from the planning process itself. This is a main reason why the most successful business leaders have found it useful to hire a third-party to help hold them accountable. It is not unusual for the CEO to experience the most discomfort during this process. After all, most of them achieved their positions as a result of their self-motivation, drive and confidence.

These same traits work against them as they typically fail to focus on anything long enough to reach their stated goals. As a result, their team members fail to achieve desired outcomes. They are too busy trying to address the many conflicting messages. Case in point, recently I did an organizational survey with a company’s top 10 executives in preparation for their annual planning retreat. We found that the CEO commonly provided this team with 25 new initiatives every week, even when the last 25 were barely addressed.

Accountability Issues

The above situations are not uncommon, and we typically find the following additional issues:

The CEO was good at understanding what needed to be done but failed to recognize and/or commit the resources required to do it.
The CEO was failing to prioritize and was making everything appear equally important.
While the CEO may be a master at time management, his leadership approach was having a negative impact on a subordinate’s ability to manage time well.
Too often responsibility and accountability are given without authority to accomplish the work.
There is not an appropriate dashboard of key metrics to isolate progress in the essential areas of the business.

Improve Accountability

If you are interested in strengthening your culture by installing the right processes and systems, please contact Activate Group, Inc. for a FREE consultation about our Executive Coaching Program. Our Program will help your Executive(s) learn how to:

Help your team members create a specific roadmap to success
Align your incentives with strategic objectives
Increase focus in the organization around the activities that will have the biggest positive impact
Communicate your goals and objectives to everyone in the organization
Ensure that there is not more than one person accountable to any initiative, process, and desired outcome