Accountability - Take It On!

Hold people accountable! This is stated often throughout the business world. When the numbers are off, the emphasis is on self-responsibility. It seems everyone agrees institutionalizing accountability is a must for sustained performance success. The goal is to have each employee assume responsibility for taking the actions required for production, not sometimes, but at all times. The stage is set – business demands accountability throughout the ranks – managers are the key for implementation and sustained execution – workers need self-accountability for success. Yet implementing accountability seems to be more difficult than ever for most organizations and managers. There are two predominant reasons for this; one is complacency, the other fundamental management technique.

Complacency is a result of growing accustomed to a world of excuses and contrition.

The media is constantly bombarding us with stories of individuals professing one thing and then discovered doing something noticeably different. Many of these individuals are government officials, business executives and idols from the worlds of sports and media entertainment. Worse, when many of these individuals are caught in the act, all that is offered in response is a litany of “I’m sorry,” “I didn’t do it,” and/or “I didn’t mean it.” These over-used exclamations are hardly examples of seizing self-responsibility. Is it any wonder that this overexposure to excuses and contrition leads to a pervasive acceptance of the same in society? Of course, this easily diffuses into the work environment with the same certainty as an off-shore oil spill moving toward a pristine shore. This results in too many managers simply being too accepting of good intention, poor performance, followed by excuses and contrition. This must change to have a self-accountable work environment.

The elimination of complacency is best accomplished through application of sound management fundamentals that foster self-responsibility.

Managers need to take steps that help individuals move beyond limiting performance beliefs and behaviors. They must aggressively put themselves in position to drive individuals to do actions that really matter for sustained performance and accept nothing less than that. Exceptional leaders take the responsibility to push, challenge and encourage workers to go beyond their behavioral comfort zones. All managers communicate what they want done and use many different activities to gather information and influence performance. In order to be effective, they must make sure each activity is right for the circumstance and done on a frequent and consistent basis. Managers who are great at developing employee self-responsibility do not just rely on standard management practices. They do two additional high-impact things. One is minimize group work and maximize individual contact. They are passionate about giving each worker individualized time and effort. The second is never miss an opportunity to immediately praise an individual that has accomplished a stated intention, objective or goal. They also seize every opportunity to question why an individual is doing actions that are misaligned with a stated intention, objective, or goal. We describe these management actions as Take It On. Accountability means doing the things needed to follow through on what one said would be done. Take It On provides immediate, appropriate and frequent management follow though. This follow through is a question-centered, thought-provoking dialogue that emphasizes what was done, not what was intended. The Manager spends little time discussing excuses. After there is agreement on the behaviors that took place, the conversation transitions to what must be done now and how the employee plans on communicating behavioral progress to the manager. This fundamental follow-through technique is used for both reinforcing doing the right things and challenging non-performance. Coaching accountability is simply helping one discover the truth and then acting on it.

Take It On needs to be brief, focused and frequent.

In a positive situation, a manager who is Taking It On might say, “I noticed you got that appointment you wanted set up for Friday. That is great! Why did that work so well this time? Keep that going and let me know how it continued to work on our end-of-the-week call.” This is a sound, quick approach to praise self-responsibility for following through on an intended action. Here is a sound, quick example of addressing a lack of follow through: “I noticed that you didn’t have one prospect call last week. That must be disappointing to you. I know you wanted to get that done. What happened? Okay, I get it, the time got away from you. What are you going to do differently this week to accomplish your intention of bringing new business into the pipeline? Good! How are you going to let me know what progress you are making before Wednesday?” The example demonstrates how a manager can drive self-accountability by using a mix of questioning to draw out ownership of past actions and behaviors that are needed now. Questioning is the tool of reflection and reflection is the self-accountability lever.

Many managers know how to do Take It On. They just don’t do it often enough because of time management concerns.

The above examples do not require much time. They do require frequent ways to be “in-the-game”. This means taking advantage of every direct and indirect contact with an employee in order to find out how implementation is proceeding. Great coaches from every competitive field know frequency and timing are significantly more vital to driving accountability than just time. In sports, a timeout often lasts less than 45 seconds, yet fans expect the coach to make all needed adjustments within that time. Take It On success feeds off of brief, just-in-time feedback.

Managers who consistently Take It On develop individuals who are self-reliable and embrace accountability. That results in a delightful imbalance of more positive Take It On conversations to challenging Take It On situations. One other thing – the next time someone says, “Hold your people accountable,” you get to say, “I do!”