Define Success with Accountability

I often hear the word “accountability” discussed like it’s an elusive secret. It’s something we always need more of. We never seem to have enough, and when we try to explain to Team Members how we want them to be accountable, it sometimes feels like more breath in the wind.

Here’s a quick way to start communicating accountability with your Teams. It’s one step in implementing a systematic communication cycle where you and your Team will continuously...

Define the work

Coach toward success

Recognize contributions

This is only going to work if you already have job descriptions because job descriptions are actually step one. If you don’t have them, you need to get them. We can help with that too. We’ll have more details in a future article, or just get in touch with us now, and we’ll give you the help you need: [email protected]. But in the meantime, you can get a look at some basic templates here: Blank Role Description, Accounting Clerk Template.

Accountabilities of Contributors

We start with Accountabilities for Contributors. These apply to everyone, because no matter what level of authority or management a person has, no matter where they sit in the organization, everyone is expected to contribute to the success of the business.

Accountabilities of All Employees

• Use your best efforts to do your work
• Demonstrate behavior consistent with company values and work within prescribed boundaries including company policies, standards, and procedures
• Tell your Manager when you don’t understand your work, require more resources or training, or otherwise can’t complete your work for any reason
• Tell your Manager as soon as possible - no surprises! - when you encounter obstacles that will stop you from completing your work up to required quality and within specified deadlines
• Tell your Manager when you have ideas for improvement or when you believe you can get more work done, you can do your work better or faster, or you can otherwise increase the quality of your work
• Tell your Manager when you’re unable to work at your best

This list might seem obvious and unnecessary, but it’s important to state the obvious because if you expect your Teams to do these things—and I’ve never met a Business Owner or a Team who didn’t expect to see this in their workplace - it’s up to you to define for them what they actually look like.

If you don’t define them, then people are going to assume they know what you’re looking for. For these items in particular, they’ll probably assume that everyone’ on the Team’s doing them, in the way that they personally think they should be done. But whenever we create an expectation without clearly defining what success looks like for the other person, the ensuing assumptions can lead to costly misunderstandings. For example:

The next set are specifically for lead employees. These people are also contributors because even though they have some leadership responsibility, they’re not formal Managers. They’re usually called Supervisors, Shift Leads, etc. They don’t hire and fire. They don’t determine pay or build departmental plans or do Reviews, but they do provide guidance and direction to the Team for specific tasks while they’re working.

Accountabilities of All Lead Employees

• Represent your Manager when that Manager cannot be present or is otherwise not available
• Provide feedback to your Manager on the performance of the Team you lead
• Participate in the recruiting process of new Team Members when asked by your Manager, and give hiring recommendations to the hiring Manager when asked
• Perform administrative tasks and coordinate projects and special assignments at the direction of your Manager
• Provide onboarding and training to Team Members as directed by your Manager

The overall benefit of putting these specific Accountabilities in writing is that they provide clarity and reduce opportunities for misunderstandings. In addition, they will strengthen your culture by starting everyone off from the same place, and they provide Managers a standard to lean on as they define how they expect their Team to improve.

Accountabilities for Managers

When you hear that 60% of new managers fail within the first 2 years in their new role, is that a surprise? In the modern workplace, the first line manager is an absolute workhorse. They essentially hold the whole thing together because every challenge, every issue, every improvement at some point makes it’s way down to them for execution.

They’re under constant stress with ever-changing demands. They’re forced to work with limited resources, and they often get no training. There’s no objective metrics or benchmarks they can use to evaluate their management work, and when they do get feedback, it’s often anecdotal or abstract or super-positive and hard for them to apply to their real day-to-day issues.

Part of this stems from the common notion that leadership & management are nebulous and undefinable. We hear phrases like “leaders are born not made.” We’re taught that what makes a leader great is their charisma or their vision or their emotional intelligence. We’re taught about personality types and encouraged to learn how to be amateur psychologists.

While the need for charisma and far-reaching vision is true in certain transformational environments, it’s not the norm for the vast majority of people who go to work everyday and are just trying to get things done. Managers don’t need charisma as much as they need a clear set of expectations i.e. Accountabilities!

For sure, management is nebulous because it’s all about judgement. Managers are unique because they’re not only responsible for their own contributions, their “technical work”, but they’re also accountable for the contributions of others, their “people work”. When a Manager’s doing their people work, the bulk of that time is spent in their own head. People work requires thinking, there’s no way around it, and managers are valuable because they can think. They can use their judgement to solve certain types of problems.

But most Managers got their jobs because they’re good at getting their technical work done, and unfortunately in the modern workplace, sitting around thinking about things just doesn’t feel productive for most people. Managers want to be productive. They’re obsessed with metrics and results and productivity and performance. It’s hard for them to prioritize the time needed for the thinking part of their roles because they feel more valuable when they’re actually doing something. Sitting around thinking and talking can make them feel like they’re not doing anything,

Yes, management and leadership are complex. Every manager does them a little differently, and every situation is unique. But that doesn’t mean the work is undefinable. On the contrary, it needs to be defined for this very reason. Managers are looking for actionable guidance and feedback just like their Teams are, and being specific about what a Manager is actually supposed to do is essential to communicating their accountability.

In short, there is a job description for Managers. It’s called Managerial Leadership, and it should be included on every Manager’s job description.

Accountabilities of All Managers

Planning

• Continuously work to improve your department’s systems and processes
• Develop and execute a plan for how your department will help achieve company goals
• Prepare your Team for times when you’re not available and verify that your Manager agrees with your plan

Defining

• Assign tasks, projects, or special assignments clearly so that Team Members know what’s required, how much is needed, when it needs to be done, and what resources are available to them
• Provide additional training and/or resources to Team Members on an ongoing, as-needed basis

Hiring & Training

• Request additional Team Members when needed from your own Manager
• When hiring, identify potential new members for your Team and share with your Manager, then select from those that your Manager has also judged to be qualified for the role
• Onboard and train new Team Members into role requirements, working relationships, company requirements, and culture
• Deselect Team Members from their role if you determine that their best efforts cannot meet your expectations
• Terminate Team Members found guilty of a serious infraction of the company’s rules or regulations

Coaching

• Conduct regular meetings with all Team Members to discuss overall Business context, plans, and problems; ensure that they understand how their roles and tasks align with the organization’s mission and vision; seek their input/suggestions
• Coach Team Members on an ongoing basis to increase their own effectiveness in their role and provide feedback on situations where they’ve used their own judgment to solve problems
• Coordinate development plans for Team Members at the direction of your own Manager, their Skip Level Manager (SLM)

Recognizing

• Conduct Team Member Reviews—according to organizational policy—to judge how well they used their own judgement in meeting your expectations and achieving desired output
• Decide your Team Members’ pay and merit increases within established organization compensation guidelines; communicate pay revisions with them

Defining Managerial Leadership as part of a Manager’s job description helps to first clearly establish expectations, which helps people who aren’t managers understand the type of complexity managers need to navigate which might lead them to realize… “I don’t ever want to have to do that stuff!”

Managerial Leadership also provides an easy vocabulary for effective conversations around what Managers should be doing. It also provides an objective standard that executive leadership can use to evaluate all the Managers in an organization.

Speaking of executive leadership—these are the people who manage Managers—we call them Skip Level Managers. They do all the normal people work, which means they’re also accountable for Managerial Leadership PLUS they have some extra accountability since from their viewpoint that can see deeper into what an organization does and farther toward its plan for the future. Their additional people work is more about growth & development, and of course, there’s a list for that too.

Accountabilities of All Skip Level Managers

• Mentor Skip Level Team Members (SLTs) by meeting with them at least annually to determine their level of understanding of the Business and learn about their career goals and plans
• Ensure that your Team Managers’ judgments of capability, decisions on pay, and treatment of their Team Members is consistent and fair in comparison with other peer Managers
• Evaluate each SLT’s potential for and interest in future career opportunities
• Decide on development opportunities—when available—for SLTs including professional development, training, role changes, and/or transfers between departments, and share that information with their Manager, your own Team Member
• Decide placement or non-placement for SLTs in the event of deselection by their Manager
• Make the final decision on appeals and disputes between an SLT and their Manager
• When your Team Managers are hiring, review their curated pool of candidates, identify those that you also judge to be qualified for the role, and inform Manager of your decision

That’s how you add Accountabilities to all of your job descriptions in order to start communicating accountability and authority to everyone in their role. The next step is to use the job description as your template for 1:1 Check-ins and formal Reviews in order to keep your conversations productive by talking about the work that’s relevant with no need for amateur psychology and personality assessments.

It’s the Manageable way.