Accountability and Ownership

There is often a misalignment between what an organization measures and what it values. As a result, there is confusion on behalf as to what should be the focus of management efforts. The goal of any accountability effort should be to first, ensure this alignment happens and second, create an environment where every manager or supervisor manages to these measures and is held accountable for achieving results. Moreover, any accountability infrastructure must involve a two-way communication stream and cannot be solely driven from the top. Staff must feel some control and ultimately ownership of their work responsibilities.

Assessment Questions: What are the organizations goals and objectives? Are these objectives clear and understandable? Is there organizational alignment with these objectives? How is the organization performing against these goals and objectives? What are the rewards for performance and penalties for non-performance within the organization and are they consistently applied?  How does the organization typically address failure or mistakes?  Who directly and indirectly influences the desired outcomes?  Do the influencers own the process?  Is the performance management process fluid or static?  Are the right people in place with the right motivations to achieve successful outcomes? 

Intervention: Cull the answers from the assessment questions and generate an accountability plan for the organization. When completed every leadership and management position within the organization should have performance measures that are SMART (Specific Measurable Actionable Realistic and Time-Related).

Miscellaneous: Where organizations get into trouble, is attempting to do this halfway and not really holding staff accountable for performance. There should be no exceptions once the process is implemented. Staff will quickly pick up on any inconsistencies and derail the process if they deem it unfair. Certainly the organization should be vested in an individual’s success, but performance goals should be met or exceeded, not explained away.

Approach:

• 1:1 interviews with senior leadership and management staff to understand existing cultural attitude towards accountability and ownership
• Review and assessment of existing performance management process including reconciling this with promotion and compensation decisions
• Review planning documents to identify short and long term goals and objectives; uncover implementation responsibilities for planning goals and objectives
• Review board minutes to assess accountability relationship between board and leader
• Conduct Focus group(s) with staff to solicit their feedback on accountability environment
• Develop accountability plan that clearly links planning objectives with internal systems including performance review process and compensation decisions