When Everyone Holds Everyone Accountable for Results

 

“How can we resent the life we've created for ourselves? Who's to blame, who's to credit, but us? Who can change it, any time we wish, but us?”

Richard Bach

 

In a culture of accountability, people demonstrate high levels of ownership to think and act in the manner necessary to achieve organizational results. Rather than having accountability forced upon them, they enthusiastically take it upon themselves. People at every level of the organization are personally committed to achieving key results targeted by the team or organization.

 

In a culture of accountability, they report proactively and follow-up constantly, diligently measuring their own progress because they have internalized their commitment to achieving results. This leads them to continually find answers, develop solutions, overcome obstacles, and triumph over any trouble that might come along. And everyone holds everyone accountable for results.

 

In a culture of accountability, leaders must work continually to create and maintain this culture.

 

 

In my observation, there is a common list of reasons when organizations and their employees struggle with accountability and fail to create this culture:

 

Leaders haven’t communicated the business objective(s).

Everyone needs to know what is expected of them. Those expectations need to be aligned across the entire team, as well as leadership. It is best to keep it to the vital few and continually beat the drum.

 

The business has an incomplete set of performance indicators.

Confirm you have KPIs for all the business objectives and that they are transparent to everyone. Standard KPIs tend to tell the story through the rear-view mirror, hence turn them into leading indicators. And carve out 15 minutes a day to review those leading indicators by team.

 

The employees aren’t empowered to solve problems and make decisions.

Empowerment is not an objectively measurable action. It is the perception of the team, their feeling of being empowered that matters. Employees are more likely to trust leaders whom they perceive as more empowering. They have greater faith and are more likely to put in effort without feeling that they are being exploited.

 

The entire team is blind to how they impact each other.

This is often the result of a lack of transparency and communication. Leaders need to provide a safe and objective inter-team communication path with a focus on processes and issues.

 

Leaders are not walking the talk.

Like it or not, you are always leading by example. People will always look at the walk and not listen to the talk. And that is especially true when it comes to accountability. The leader shows others how it is done, lets them see accountability in action, and lets them know the standard for them to live up to.

 

There are no consequences.

Ultimately, there have to be consequences for consistently poor performance and reinforcing for positive results and behaviors. Without this, employees will soon catch on that accountability is all talk and no action.

 

Concerns and issues are not addressed right away.

Do not wait for a fire to break out. Act on any issues the moment they happen. Because waiting to handle them ends up taking more time, more energy, and is draining. And do not let putting out fires be at the top of your list for why you feel valuable as a leader.

 

Success is not celebrated.

For some reason celebrating success is a struggle for many leaders and organizations. Though success needs the same level of significance that you give issues – make the feedback specific, tell them what is going well and what they are doing right.

 

 

Consider addressing all those struggles in your organization to successfully create a culture of accountability. CJ Goulding provides a S.I.M.P.L.E. recipe:

• Set expectations

• Invite commitment

• Measure progress

• Provide feedback

• Link to consequences

• Evaluate effectiveness

 

Contact us to find out how an interim or fractional sales leader can help establish accountability.

 

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CJ Goulding - 6 Practical Ways to Create an Accountability Culture in a Company

Photo by Anne Gosewehr