Creating a Culture of Accountability

As a former EOS® Integrator, a lot of my role was focused on creating a culture of accountability. Having come from a corporate background I was used to a relatively low threshold of accountability and it was something that drove me crazy. What I have learned is that a culture that lacks accountability will drive the top performers right out the door.

If a company isn’t holding all team members to the same standards of performance the people that feel like they are pulling the weight of those that just get to ride on their coattails will revolt. The only way to address this is to establish standards and expectations that are communicated and revisited often. This will establish a culture of accountability. Below are very simple ways you can start to shift your organization's culture now. 

Roles and Responsibilities are Clear

It’s important organizationally that people understand what expectations are for their performance. What do success and failure in their role look like? It’s also important that team members understand what core responsibilities other members of their team have. Not because they are nosey, but because they need to understand the big picture and how their role fits in. They need to know how their role supports their teammates’ roles, and who to go to if they have questions on a specific process.

You have to determine who has ultimate accountability. A team may be working collaboratively on a project, but there needs to be one of those team members that is going to have ultimate accountability for making sure the project is completed. Make sure people understand not only their own roles and responsibilities but that they also know what their teammates' accountabilities are.

Identify Goals & KPI’s 

All too often, companies will develop their goals in objective terms. For example, “We want to grow the business” or “We want to increase profits”. While, “yay,” you have goals, there is nothing measurable about them. There is a lot of ambiguity here that leaves far too much open to interpretation. 

Let’s take the “grow the business” goal and deconstruct that. I’m willing to bet you could take a team of people and ask them what that means and you would likely get a lot of different answers. I imagine there would be responses like, break into new markets, increase revenue, or increase the number of clients/customers. See what I mean? A clear goal would be to say, “We want to grow the business 20% in annual revenue and gain at least 5 new clients in Indiana and 5 in Ohio.” This gives you clear goals that can easily be measured and revisited on a reoccurring basis. 

Revisit and Provide Progress Reports 

As with any goal, you don’t get to set them and forget them, unless of course, you prefer the lack of accountability thing. Once you’ve established your goals and KPI’s you should have these mapped out on a scorecard, performance dashboard or whatever you determine works best for your organization. These dashboards should be updated by the team members with accountability for each metric ahead of each meeting. 

Depending on the KPI’s you have established I would recommend that you review these with your teams at least once a month to determine what’s working, what’s not, and where help may be needed. Make sure your progress reporting is going over the specific measurables and you’re not just asking your teams if things are good or bad.

If People Are Stuck Rally The Team Around Them

The importance of having these meetings regularly and using actual numbers as the benchmark is not to call out team members that are slacking (although you will absolutely be able to determine the people that aren’t used to being held accountable). The reason for having these meetings regularly is because if someone is stuck, you want to be able to have the option to identify that as early as possible. 

In most work cultures, people are very unlikely to come to their boss and admit that they either don’t know how to do something or are doing very poorly on something if they know there is still time before it needs to be done. Then as the time is dwindling they get into the “Oh Shit” position where they have to say something, but unfortunately at that point, it is often too late for the leader to be able to step in and help. 

Having these meetings regularly presents the opportunity for team members to advocate for themselves if they are stuck or aren’t sure of what their next step should be to reach their goal. This is an excellent opportunity for the team to discuss ways that individual could reach their goals, or identify skill sets other team members might have that may be able to help them. 

Celebrate Wins

“Thank You” and “Good Job” are two very powerful phrases that make a big impact and take minimal effort. Yet they are also two phrases that are not used often enough by most leadership teams, largely because those leaders didn’t grow up with leaders that used them. This is the chance to be different, to be better. 

Celebrate wins with the team. Make it a standing item on your meeting agenda when you’re reviewing metrics. Make sure as a leader you are celebrating achievements, but also give your team members the opportunity to celebrate each other. They will often recognize each other for efforts you or other team members didn’t even know happened. This simple agenda item can be the saving grace for a team member that is feeling unappreciated or down. 

Creating a culture of accountability is not an easy task, but it is a rewarding one. It’s rewarding for the people working there and for the business as a whole. If your business needs some help setting up your accountability structure, I’d love to chat. You can also follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn, or sign up for my newsletter in the footer to stay up to date.