Accountability vs. Responsibility
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In this episode, I speak about the definition and understanding of the concepts of accountability and responsibility.
Responsibility: Responsibility is who is rolling up their sleeves to get the job done; it may be one, or several people that may be responsible for an assignment or task
Accountability: Accountability is always ONE and only one person that owns it
Types of accountabilities
These are the different types or levels of accountability that are critical for an organization.
Functional Accountability: For each major function of the organization, who is the one and only person that's accountable?
Examples: head of company, sales, operations, marketing, finance
Accountability for a Priority or Initiative: an initiative, a rock, an OKR, or whatever term you use for the annual most important thing, or for a 90-day most important thing or set of most important things we're doing.
The Measure of Success Accountability or KPI Key Performance: Each function should have a set of key performance indicators they're accountable for.
What are those measures of success?
Who's accountable for each of those measures?
Task accountability That's more of a specific action than a bigger priority or a function and task priority or what I call who, what, when.
Who's the one person accountable for? one person
What are you actually going to do?
When are you going to have it done by?
Functions of an Organization
What are the 8, 10, 12, and 14 functions within your organization? and who's the one person accountable, for that function?
Three different function opportunities to strengthen your team
Some functions may have multiple people who are accountable, and it's causing confusion.
Do you have any functions where nobody's accountable?
Someone is stretched way too thin
Tools for Functional Accountability
Functional Accountability Chart: First, figure out where you've got function issues. Do you need to solve all those issues today? And prioritize where your biggest opportunity areas are and solve them.
The 12 Quarter Leadership Team Plan: is taking that kind of static functional accountability chart. And it's using your plan for the next 4, 8, and 12 quarters. Where do I need to be? What actions do I need to take to get me there?
The Job Scorecard: Clarifies accountability. It has four things:
The mission of the job
Roles and Responsibilities
Measurable outcomes for a job, and what are the measurable outcomes of that job?
What are the competencies you need to do the job? What are the competencies/skills you need to be successful in that job?
Meeting Rhythms or Planning and Communication Rhythms: Together with your team, define those accountabilities; what are the priorities? Who's accountable for each priority? What are the key performance indicators, measures of success etc. The most important part of the meeting rhythm from annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily as it relates to accountability, is the weekly meeting. Accountability lives or dies with your ability in the weekly meeting to hold people accountable for what they say; what they said they were going to do, what they've committed to, whether it's a task or a who, what, or when; weekly accountability meeting is where you hold them accountable.
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[00:00:00] Intro
Welcome to another Mike, on the Mic episode of the Better Leadership Team Show. Today I want to talk about, the problem; I probably hear more than any other problem the, questions I get about this subject from prospective clients, any leader that I talk to, is incredible, and it's focused on accountability; and the way I typically hear the question is something like, you know, what do I have to do? Fire everybody? They say they're gonna do things, but they don't get it done; does accountability mean I need to fire everyone? What do I need to do? Why doesn't anybody follow through on what they say they're gonna do?
And where I typically start in trying to dissect that problem; is first by checking on whether there is a clear definition of; what does that mean? And how important is that? When you tell somebody they're accountable for something, how important is it for them to truly understand; what the hell you're talking about?
So let's start with a definition, and then I'll dive into, some types of accountability; some how-tos, unaccountability, and then where to start, because it's a lot and the growth here never ends; but let's talk about a definition, and I wanna start with two words that are most often used interchangeably, which I think causes a big part of the problem.
And those two words are accountability and responsibility; I don't care what it says on dictionary.com, it's really important to differentiate these two words, and I'm gonna coach you to define them in this way, and I'm gonna start with responsibility, and then of course, we'll dive deep on accountability.
[00:01:49] Responsability
To me, responsibility is who is rolling up their sleeves to get the job done; it's fair for me to get up in front of a team of a thousand, using this definition, and say something like, we are all responsible for giving our clients wow, levels of service; using my definition; that's a fair statement, and that's how I like to use the word responsible or responsibility; who's rolling up their sleeves to get the job done; pretty simple.
[00:02:21] Accountability
Now let's talk about accountability; accountability is always and only one person; if more than one person is accountable, nobody's accountable; so while we all might be responsible, for giving our clients wow levels of service, there's one person in the organization accountable; for measuring that we're doing that, for deciding on the right strategy to do that, on the right process to do that, there's one person on the team; we are gonna hold accountable to know where we are, to know where we need to be, and to know what we've gotta do to get there; that's accountability.
So when you ask the question, oh, we've got this task to do, who? Who's gonna be accountable? If two people raise their hand and say, well, you know, me and Joe will do it, the answer is no. You and Joe might be responsible; I need to know who the one person accountable is, and this way, there's no pointing fingers; well, you know, I tried, but Joe wouldn't answer his email, and you know, I didn't get a document on time from Susan, or you are accountable, one person accountable; we've gotta make that clear. So, I start off in that way; responsibility, who's rolling up their sleeves; accountability, who's the one and only one person that owns it.
[00:03:47] Types of Accountability
That being said, let's talk a little bit about the types of accountability and I'll start with functional accountability.
[00:03:56] Functional Accountability
Functional accountability means for each major function of the organization; head of company is a function, sales is a function, operations is a function, marketing is a function, finance is a function; you get the idea for each function, who is the one and only one person that's accountable for that function. That's one type of accountability.
[00:04:25] Accountability for a Priority or Initiative
Second type of accountability is accountability for a priority or an initiative or a rock or an OKR or whatever term you use for kind of an annual most important thing, or for a 90 days most important thing or set of most important things we're doing.
There should be one person accountable, for each one of those most important priorities; now, hopefully, you don't have 12 most important priorities, or you don't have any priorities, right? If everything's a priority, nothing's a priority, but assuming you've got 2, 3, 4 most important priorities for the year, or rocks for the quarter, or OKRs; each one of them should have someone accountable; now, again, you could argue; well, one of our priorities is to, you know, improve the percent of A players within our organization and man our talent development folks are involved in that; our line managers are involved in that; our finance team is involved in that; yes, you've got a lot of folks and teams responsible.
We need one person accountable; without that one person accountable, you don't truly have accountability; there's too much confusion about who's doing what and who dropped the ball; so one type of accountability is functional accountability; a second type, is priority type accountability.
[00:05:56] A Measure of Success Accountability or KPI
A third is a measure of success accountability or a KPI key performance indicator; each function should have a set of key performance indicators, they're accountable for; it's not enough to say SANGJI is accountable for marketing; what does marketing mean? Does it mean we've got a great website? Does it mean we've got a wonderful, you know, email campaign, or our social media, pictures are beautiful this year? What does it mean? How do you measure success for marketing? It might be marketing qualified leads, for talent development or human resources; it might be your employee net promoter score for sales; it might be the number of new clients you brought on board or your closing ratio on, you know, on opportunities.
What are those measures of success? even looking at the P and L and the balance sheet and saying who's accountable for each of those measures? Who's truly accountable for gross margin on the team?
So number one is functional accountability; number two is priority accountability; number three, is measure of success accountability and the fourth one, I'll talk about is task accountability.
[00:07:10] Task Accountability
Very often when I'm in a meeting with a client, something comes up that's not a big initiative, project priority, but it's, hey, yeah, we ought to do that; you know, we ought to, you know, we ought to send that survey to our clients, you know, sometime over the next couple of weeks, or, yeah, we oughta have, you know, we ought to prepare for our uh, you know, all hands meeting or town hall with the team, you know, sometime next week you come up with something, that's more of a specific action than a bigger priority or a function and task priority or what I call who, what, when, means when you have a task, stopping right there and saying, wait a minute, sounds like we've got a who, what when who's gonna take accountability for this?
And again, if it, SANGJI and I are gonna work on it; no, you are responsible who's the one person; so who, when is, Who's accountable? one person; the second thing is, What are you actually gonna do? And then the last w is when are you gonna have it done by? So those are what I see come up most is the different types or levels of accountability that are critical.
Let's talk a little bit about the hows, some tasks, some techniques, some exercises, that will help make sure you are adding, you know, five x the accountability that you have today and really decreasing the drama within your organization and by the way, where all this fits, in a previous episode; I talked about the six pillars of building a great leadership team, what I call a breakthrough leadership team; all these accountability levels and types, fit really within two of the pillars.
Number one certainly is a pillar; I call proactively structuring the team; certainly understanding functional accountability is part of that, and the other place that fits squarely, is in a pillar I call execute with discipline.
[00:09:05] Functions of an Organization
So let's talk a little bit about the how, and the first thing I want to talk about is something called functional accountability; and very simply, or maybe not so simply, for most companies I work with, it is agreeing on the team; what are the major functions? Is operations a function, is procurement to function? Is, you know; certainly sales is probably a function; marketing is a function, head of company is certainly a function; it's not titles, it's not VP of sales and marketing, it's sales is a function, marketing is a function.
What are the 8, 10, 12, and 14 functions within your organization? If you're coming up with 27, you've probably got way too many, but what are the functions within your organization, and who's the one person accountable, for that function? When you do this exercise as a team, you will find three different opportunities to strengthen your team. One is you're gonna find that you have some functions, where multiple people are accountable, and it's causing confusion; sometimes that happens at the very top, where there are two or three heads of company because we've got a partner, or we've got a CEO and a president, and the CEO hasn't quite given up the reins, you know, on the day-to-day.
So functional accountability, that's one issue is, do you have multiple people accountable for an individual function, and is that causing confusion? Normally does; second thing is, do you have any functions where nobody's accountable? You know, yes, customer experience is a function; we're all responsible, maybe nobody's accountable, and a whole bunch may be slipping through the cracks because of that.
The third problem you find is that you've got someone stretched way too thin, on the team. Now, is it okay for one person to be accountable for multiple functions? Absolutely; that will almost always happen, and that's okay; early on in your growth as a company, if you are the C E O, you may be the CEO and accountable for five of the functions, or if you're a solo entrepreneur, you may be accountable for all of the functions; and that's not necessarily a problem unless it's a problem; unless someone is stretched way too thin, so that's the other problem, is you might find your chief operating officer or your CFO or your CEO is accountable for 4, 5, 6 functions and they're just stretched way too thin.
[00:11:43] Functional Accountability Chart
So that's the first tool you want to use; functional accountability chart; figure out where you've got those issues. Do you need to solve all those issues today? Of course not, you need to prioritize where your biggest opportunity areas are and solve them.
[00:11:56] The 12 Quarter Leadership Team Plan
The second tool is something called the 12-quarter Leadership Team Plan, and that's very simply, and I may do a whole episode on a 12-quarter plan cuz it's, it's probably important enough to do that, but I'll stay high level for now. The 12-quarter leadership team plan is like taking that kind of static functional accountability chart we just talked about, where you're saying, where are we today or where do we need to be? And it's using your plan for the next 4, 8, 12 quarters and say, where do I need to be? At what point, will I have a need to add so many clients per month? That my CEO can't also be the head of sales, I need a VP of sales; at what point do we have so many clients? We need someone to head up the customer service function.
At what point are we adding so many products? We need a product development person, so the 12-quarter leadership team plan, is like the functional accountability chart, but go from static to dynamic, and to do that, you need a good understanding of what your plan is, for eight quarters out, your financial drivers, like your P and L, your balance sheet, but more importantly, your non-financial drivers, like number of new products, number of new clients, number of shipments, that kind of thing. So we talked about the functional accountability chart, just talked about the 12-quarter leadership team plan.
[00:13:24] The Job Scorecard
Next thing I want to talk about is the job scorecard; a job scorecard is kind of like a job description, on steroids; most job descriptions I've seen are not worth the paper they're printed on. A job scorecard job is to clarify accountability at a level that you typically don't have on a team, so there are four parts of a great job scorecard, and I'm stealing this term, by the way, from a methodology called top grading. There's a great book called Who The A Method for Hiring; you ought to go read.
But a job scorecard has four things; a mission of the job, one or two sentences, certainly, roles, and responsibilities, which is what's on a typical job scorecard, but then it's got measurable outcomes, which might be an overlap if you did that on the functional accountability chart; but for a job, what are the measurable outcomes of that job? Again, marketing is a great example; roles and responsibilities of marketing may say things like, you know, rework our brand and make sure our website is up to date and design digital marketing campaign, but you could do all those things and still fail at marketing. What are the measurable outcomes, you are truly accountable for? That's the third thing on the job scorecard.
And then the fourth thing is, what are the competencies you need to do the job? And knowing those competencies, you know, project management skills, analytical skills, communication skills, coaching skills; you name it. What are the competencies you need, including your core values as competencies?
What competencies do you need to be successful on the job? And once you do that job scorecard could be used, to coach someone internally who's already in that role, as to where they need to improve. Could be used as a performance assessment tool for the folks internally; it could be used to figure out if someone's ready for a promotion, and absolutely it should and could be used when you are hiring someone into that role; those roles and responsibilities, but especially the measurable outcomes and the competencies are critical to figuring out who the right person is.
[00:15:40] Meeting Rhythms or Planning and Communication Rhythms
The next tool I wanna talk about is meeting rhythms, or what I call planning and communication rhythms. All of this accountability is great, but if you are not getting together with your team, specifically to define those accountabilities, what are the priorities? Who's accountable for each priority? What are the key performance indicators, measures of success, and who's accountable.
If you don't have the right meeting rhythm to define those and, most importantly, hold folks accountable for that; the right annual planning type of meeting session, annual planning, quarterly planning, and learning monthly check-ins, weekly accountability meetings, daily huddles; although daily huddles are great, they're not really an accountability tool.
I found the most important part of the meeting rhythm from annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily; the most important thing, as it relates to accountability, is the weekly meeting. Accountability lives or dies with your ability in the weekly meeting to hold people accountable for what they say; what they said they were going to do, what they've committed to, whether it's a task or a who, what, when, whether it's a K p or whether it's a rock or an O K R, you know, or a priority; that weekly accountability meeting is where you hold them accountable.
And again, if you don't have the right agenda, for those meetings and if you're not truly holding people accountable, if you're letting people say, ah, I was busy, I didn't get to it, accountability dies, right? Well, this is something you committed to; how are you gonna make sure, how could we help you make sure, that next week you're back on target? So meeting rhythms are critical.
And the last thing I'll say is there's other tools that are better than, you know, Hey, let's look at the pictures of the old flip charts, to remember what our priorities were; or you know, let's look at the PowerPoint deck we created two months ago, to do our town hall that may be outdated now.
There are some wonderful tools out there, to help you manage all of these decisions; keep up to date on your priorities, on your who, what, when's all the things I, I happen to use one called Metronome Growth Systems, with my clients; that's wonderful; but that's not the only tool. It's important to have a set of tools, so that's a lot.
We talked about functional accountability chart, 12-quarter leadership, team plan, job scorecard, meeting rhythms, and tools; we talked about the levels of accountability, functional priority, a measure of success, and task. That's a lot. Where do you start?
Well, where you start or where you continue because, I imagine you're all not starting this; you're, or you're not starting this, you're on a journey, but where you should start, depends on where you are right now. I'd say all things being equal; number one, make sure you've got your functional accountability right; even if you think you've got it; and I've had CEOs in meetings go, oh, this exercise should take 10 minutes and an hour and a half later, we're still trying to figure out what their functions are or figure out who's really accountable, for talent development.
So start with the functional accountability chart; make sure you've got that right; make sure everybody's clear on what the functions are, even what they're called is important, who's accountable, where you've got some, some priorities around filling empty seats or dealing with someone that stretched too thin or dealing with multiple people accountable.
So start with the functional accountability chart, get that right, and then very quickly, in parallel, make sure you've got the right meeting with them because none of this is gonna matter unless you are getting together as a team to define those accountabilities and hold people accountable.
I promise you; if you start down the road of doing these things, you will have a whole lot less drama on the team; you will be much less frustrated, that people aren't doing what they say, they were gonna do, because, by the way, part of the reason they're not doing that, is cuz they weren't clear on what they supposed to do and when they were supposed to get it done, they weren't even clear, they were accountable.
They thought somebody else was doing it until you looked at them and said, where is it? So get ‘crakin’ on accountability.
I look forward to, seeing you or having you hear me, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. See you or hear you next time.