Do you hold your people accountable? Do they know, without a doubt, what is expected of them? And are there consequences for achieving or not their KPIs?
I’ve worked with many organisations to help them identify their people capability and capacity requirements to deliver on their business strategy. What I commonly see is business leaders who do not hold their people accountable for delivering business critical results, which results in the business not achieving their growth aspirations.
Last week I spent the day with a new client to gain an understanding of their business goals and obstacles to achieving them. We talked about their significant investment in a sales and marketing team that has resulted in a decrease in revenue and profit, and static leads! Unfortunately, their culture lacks accountability.
5 Ways to Create a Culture of Accountability
The strategies we’re working on with this business are focused on increased accountability to improve business profitability, and include:
- Company scoreboard – you need a business plan that has KPIs. The company scoreboard needs to be communicated and visible to your team so they understand the business goals and can focus their activity on delivering same.
- Position descriptions – provide clarity around roles and responsibilities. We include the “what” and “how”, which are the performance outcomes and behavioural expectations to support organisational values, which help develop that culture of accountability.
- 90-day KPIs – using the company scoreboard and position descriptions, develop 90-day KPIs for each person in your team to ensure clarity around what is expected of them and how it will be measured.
- Feedback – without regular quality conversations around job performance, employees will do their best but it may not be what you need to achieve business goals. Ensure you have a system of feedback.
- Consequences – what happens if your team members meet or don’t meet the expectations? There need to be consequences. It’s important to have a reward and recognition program that acknowledges the right outcomes, including those people who are living the organisational values. It’s also important that there are consequences for those people who are not meeting expectations – and for a sales person not hitting their targets, that means not being paid their commission.
Written by Claire Harrison, Author of The CEO Secret Guide to Managing and Motivating Employees, and Managing Director of Harrison Human Resources™.
