How to Create Accountable Teams with Eric Coryell
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Eric Coryell, author of Revolutionized Teamwork: How to Create and Lead Accountable Teams, shares insights from his 25 years in corporate leadership and 15 years of consulting.
His mission: Replace hierarchical accountability systems with team-based structures centered around workflows.
Defining Accountability in Leadership
Most leadership struggles stem from unclear accountability.
High-performing teams address “real issues” openly rather than avoiding or deferring them to leaders.
Characteristics of a High-Performing Team
• Clear purpose and shared team accountability.
• Measurable success indicators, such as revenue and customer satisfaction.
• Competent members with effective processes.
• A strong “shared fate” to unify team efforts.
Steps to Build Accountability
1. Define Team Purpose:
• Establish clarity on what the team, not individuals, is accountable for.
• Avoid fragmentation of responsibility by ensuring shared metrics.
2. Measure Success:
• Teams need quantifiable indicators to track accountability collectively.
3. Create Shared Fate:
Foster a sense of mutual dependence through shared metrics, common challenges, or proximity.
Examples include cross-functional metrics, adversarial goals (e.g., competitors), and shared physical spaces.
Transforming Team Dynamics
Destroying Hierarchical Models:
Hierarchies stem from outdated military models focusing on top-down accountability.
• Replace with team-centered workflows and decision-making autonomy.
Empowering Teams:
Shift accountability to teams through defined roles, shared decision-making, and collaborative problem-solving.
Teams review performance collectively to foster transparency and mutual growth.
Overcoming Resistance:
Leaders must relinquish control, and team members must embrace responsibility.
Success depends on leaders modeling accountability and teams defining their non-negotiables.
Challenges and Opportunities
Remote and Hybrid Work:
Challenges: Loss of team connection and reliance on outdated productivity measures.
Opportunities: Redefining productivity standards and creating intentional, virtual team bonds.
Navigating Cultural Fit:
Align team values and behaviors with accountability frameworks to ensure synergy.
Address behavioral misalignments through open conversations and team-defined expectations.
Practical Advice for Leaders
• Start with leadership teams before scaling changes across organizations.
Focus on team collaboration, accountability, and adaptability rather than individual heroics.
Tools like cross-functional teams, shared metrics, and decision mapping can drive transformation.
Conclusion
Eric encourages leaders to challenge traditional structures and embrace team accountability to build resilient, functional organizations.
His resources, including the book Revolutionized Teamwork, offer practical steps for initiating change.
Thanks for listening!
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Mike Goldman: Eric Coriel spent 25 years working in the corporate world with five different organizations ranging in size from 5 million to 500 million, holding a variety of positions, including two stints as president.
It was during this time that he learned a lot about the promises and pitfalls of leadership and leading teams. For the past 15 years, he's worked on his own, helping others build and lead accountable teams inside their organizations. His ultimate mission is to destroy the organizational hierarchy as a means to managing accountability, and instead building organizations around workflows and accountable teams.
He's also the author of revolutionized teamwork, how to create and lead accountable teams, Eric. Welcome.
Eric Coryell: Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me.
Mike Goldman: Really looking forward to this. Eric and I were introduced to each other because we're both [00:01:00] Vistage certified speakers. And we were talking a little bit about that before we kind of hit record on the show.
So really excited about diving in, especially because, you know, I would say as a, As someone who's coached leadership teams for, I've been a coaching consultant for over 35 years, but I've coached leadership teams for almost 20. And I would say the number one question I get from frustrated CEOs is how do I hold everybody accountable?
Like, do I just need to fire everybody? That's it. Not doing what they say they're gonna do. So, so Eric's gonna give us the answer to that. So that's what we're gonna dive into all things. yeah, I'm setting the bar high, Eric. You bet you better answer that for us
Eric Coryell: we got this 30 minutes. No problem.
Mike Goldman: So we're gonna talk, you know, all things accountability,but as we dive in. M
y first question as always is, you know, Eric, from all of your experience, what do you believe is the one most important characteristic [00:02:00] of a great leadership team?
Eric Coryell: I'd say of a great leadership team and any team, in fact, is their ability to deal with all call with their real issues together. real issue is any issue that affects the team's ability to achieve its goals or purpose. And inside most teams, if you really pay attention when it comes to the real issues, the pattern around which we deal with that is to either ignore it.talk behind each other's back, or we ultimately look to the leader and expect that they're going to take care of it high performing or highly accountable teams, that team gets comfortable and good at taking on those issues together. but my experience, most teams actually collude not to talk about those real issues. we'll talk about the safe stuff and we'll have the real issue conversation in the meeting after the meeting and our favorite subgroups in the bars, bathrooms and hallways, but on really high performing, accountable teams, we get really comfortable and good at taking on those issues together as a team.
Mike Goldman: and
Eric Coryell: the single greatest characteristic I
Mike Goldman: let's, I want to dive into that a little bit. Cause I, I know it's so important. What [00:03:00] have you seen?
As far as actions leaders can take, if they've got a situation where on their team, if they're being honest,
if their team is not the safest place to have those conversations, I've been in rooms where, the CEO is frustrated that no one is speaking their mind. and in rooms where maybe the CEO doesn't realize no one is speaking their mind,
Eric Coryell: Yes.
Mike Goldman: could a leader or leadership team do to create a safer.
Environment.
Eric Coryell: Well, that's a multi step process, really. And it's really, it starts with understanding of what really makes a team. And then ultimately, what do you need to do to get there? And so there's steps you can do, but it's also requires. Engagement by the team members, right? So it's a multi faceted thing.
But if you really think about a great team, what I often ask people to do is think about the best team you've ever been on. And most people, in my experience, have been on a really good team at some point, whether it's like a high school sports team or a band or a volunteer organization, whatever it [00:04:00] was. And you go back to that team and you really think, okay, what was true about that team? What was great about that team? Well, part of it was structural. I mean, there were structural things in place that aren't always in place, especially at a leadership team level. the first is there was a really clear purpose as to what we are accountable for or what we are here to achieve. And the fun exercise to do with a leadership team is you start the meeting out and have everybody pull out a blank sheet of paper. And I actually had my Vistage chair put me up to this. And she goes, does everyone on your leadership team know what the team's accountable for? I'm like, Oh, absolutely. She goes, why don't you test it? the next meeting, everyone pulled a bunch of paper and said, write down what you think this team is accountable for. So they did. We put the answers on the board and there were five different answers. And we were a six person team. And I realized real quickly that if I wanted to lead an accountable or high performing team, the first thing I had to make clear was what exactly is that team accountable for. And what became really evident was everybody on that team knew exactly what they were individually accountable for. But there was no real clarity around what the team was [00:05:00] accountable for as a team. So very often a leadership team level, it's gonna end up something like, well, you as a team are here to ensure the sustainable, profitable growth of the organization, whatever it is, there's gotta be real clarity around what that team's accountable for.
And that's step number one. And I'll tell you in the absence of that, it's hard to have these difficult conversations with each other because to a great degree, we're all operating under a different assumption around what we're here to do. The second thing, second component to this is that we're able to measure that, that we can quantifiably say, Hey, we are successful or not successful in achieving those elements.
So if I'm looking at my leadership team saying you're sustainable for, you know, you're accountable for the sustainable, profitable growth of the company. Well, how do we measure that? Well, revenue is now a team accountability.if we're profitable, it's now EBITDA. And if we're sustainable, we better have cash in the bank.
We better have happy customers. We better have an environment that people want to come work at. And in most leadership teams, well, the salesperson's got the sales. You know, the CFO has got the income and cash. And the HR manager's got, you know, the employee engagement. [00:06:00] we as a team are not accountable to solve those things and address those things.
And they're individual measurements as opposed to being a team metric. The third thing, and this is where most leaders really spend most of their time and attention when it comes to their teams, is that you have competent people and capable processes, as a leader, I'll speak for myself. At least I've put a lot of my time, energy and making sure the right people in the bus and all that kind of stuff.
And then we had good processes and all that kind of stuff. And they are both important. I'm just going to tell you, however, my experience, because I used to think if I got the right people in the room, all of a sudden the team was going to function . In fact, if I just got a bunch of A plus players, we were going to be all fine.
Looking back, probably my most talented team was my least functioning team. So what I realized is you know, A plus players don't guarantee a functional team, but you can't tolerate incompetence and expect the team to function just like you can't function if you've got broken processes.
But probably the single most important thing I've learned in order to get a team to have the tough conversations is there has [00:07:00] to be what I call a meaningful shared fate. by shared fate, I mean there has to be an experience of what happens to one happens to all. All. different than the purpose. The purpose is what we're here to achieve. But in order to get a team to truly function like a team, especially under pressure and adversity, there's got to be some degree of a shared fate.
There's got to be this experience of what happens to one happens to all. And in certain environments like team sports, it's built in, right? We either win the game together, we lose the game together. I mean, it's kind of built into the process. In other environments, especially in business, you need to create it. In business, the default shared fate for most teams literally is surviving the boss. we define teams as a group of people report to somebody, but the only shared fate at that point literally is surviving the boss. I mean, the conversations in the team becomes like this. Did you hear what Eric said this morning?
No, but you see what the idiot did yesterday, right? And those become the conversations that gel the team together. [00:08:00] So if you want a team to really be able to function at half the tough conversations, you've got to create a strong enough shared fate. it's, I'm just going to suggest inside most business environments, you've got to create it because left to its own devices, it's inherently, you know, surviving the boss. If you look at, you know, places that create good teams, think about the military, for example. Um, what's the first three months call?
Bootcamp.
Basic training. What's the goal of bootcamp? it's to break you down as an individual and create a team I have a very good friend who was a former Marine introduced him as an ex marine once he almost killed me. It turns out there's no such thing foul that away may save your life someday, right? So I asked him because now that he's out I'm like I've seen in the movies and TV but now that you're out tell me the truth. Like what really happened at bootcamp? Tell me the stories, right? He goes, Oh, Eric, it's different depending upon where you go, but it is all to the same effect. I'm like, Oh yeah, what's [00:09:00] that? He goes, well, I figured it out the second day. Well, what happened? He goes, the Sergeant came in the barracks, woke us all up at 0500. Five o'clock in the morning, dragged us all out to the beach, told all of us that we were going to go from here to over there as fast as we possibly could.
And we were going to separate the men from the boys. And he blew the whistle and we took off. As Eric, it turned out to be a 90 minute physical gauntlet. We swam to the point we almost drowned. We ran forever. We climbed walls. We crawled on our barbed wire. But then we had to run around and around this obstacle course in the forest until they finally blew the whistle. He goes, yep, and I finished first. I'm like, that's awesome. He's like, nope. I'm like, why? He goes, well, they lined us up in the order of our finish and the sergeant got two inches in front of my face and tore me apart. I'm like, I don't get it. You won. He goes, yeah, I won. But I also happened to pass up all my teammates who were struggling in the forest and [00:10:00] I kept going. And I figured out really fast, it didn't matter when I finished, it only mattered when everybody else finished. He goes, Eric, that's what they did during basic training. Is they made your life increasingly miserable. Until You figured out it was about the team and not you. And if you didn't. Didn't matter how smart or strong you were.
They got you out because in the heat of the battle, you better have each other's back because people's lives are at stake because Eric, everything they did was to build shared fate. We all lost our hair. We all wore the same clothes. Every exercise from one shared fate. So much so by the end of those three months.
We would have died for each other. Point is, you're not going to have tough, meaningful conversations with each other unless there's a strong enough shared faith. Because if there isn't, at the end of the day, I care about my accountability. You care about your accountability. Let's hope this all works out. that's the case that exists, especially at a leadership team level, because that's my accountability. I'm here to generate sales, or I'm here to get product out, or I'm here create [00:11:00] this happy culture, right? And it's not, there's no shared fate on that team. So those are the four things in my experience that have to exist as a foundation before you're ever going to get to the point where we're having tough conversations with each other.
Mike Goldman: There's so much to unpack there and we'll unpack a lot of it, but I want to hit on this idea of, I want to continue on this idea of shared fate, because I think that's so important where even, you know, the organizations that are competent. At some level at driving accountability, there, there is accountability for the head of marketing, driving enough marketing, qualified leads, and the head of sales, closing enough deals and the head of HR, you know, getting a certain employee retention, whatever the, there's some at now.
Now the crappy companies don't do any of that, but the, you know, the competent companies are doing some of that, but there's still this. we didn't hit our revenue target and the CEO is frustrated, especially if the [00:12:00] CEO is the owner and it's hitting their bank account in a big way, but the CEO is frustrated.
The rest team is like, all right, well, we'll send another goal next quarter. and while, yeah, you know, there is some. Frustration and disappointment that the team didn't hit their revenue goals or their EBITDA goals or whatever it is. I'm not sure there's shared fate there. Some are just like, let's, so what are some examples?
I mean, great example from the Marines, but when it comes to a leadership team in business, what's, what are some examples of a true shared fate?
Eric Coryell: Well, one, I mean, probably my favorite way of creating a shared fate is to get a team accountable around a set of metrics together. I went back to my leadership team, right? And I said, okay, I finally figured it out. I got to start with the purpose. So what are you accountable for? And just to simplify it, I basically said, look, you as a leadership team are here to ensure the sustainable, profitable growth of this company.
And that's what you're here as a leadership team to do. You know, because if, In order for us to survive, right, be [00:13:00] profitable, we have to be growing, and we got to make this sustainable, right? We're in this for the long term. I said, all right, how do you measure that? revenue. So I put it up on the board and said, okay, you as a team now are accountable for revenue. And my HR manager goes, well, I don't influence revenue. Yeah, you do. My IT manager goes, I have no effect on revenue. I'm like, yeah, you do. we're gonna be profitable, you as a team are accountable for EBITDA. If we're going to be sustainable, we better have cash in the bank, right? So that's not a measurement for the team.
And if we're going to be sustainable, we better have happy customers. Don't make a dollar at the expense of customer satisfaction. That's not a sustainable strategy. And we better have an environment where people want to come and work out and stay. my deal with my team was simple. Every second Monday of every month, okay, uh, 8am.
we had a standing meeting and the metrics came up and I, as a leader, got to set the expectation, right? So here we're, you know, here we did a rolling 12 month basis. I would set the deal. And at that point they were either meeting expectations or they were not. If there are meeting expectations, big green border around it, everything's good. If they're not, big red border around it. And my deal with my team was the second a graph goes from [00:14:00] green to red. In other words, you go from meeting expectations to not meeting expectations Initially I gave them 10 days, ultimately it became 5 days. They had 5 days to get together and figure out what they were going to do to fix this.
Because that's really what it means to be accountable. Accountable people, accountable teams, when they fall short of expectations, they start doing something different until they get it fixed. Inside most organizations, it's what I call leader led accountable. Sales are down and the sales manager isn't doing something different to fix it.
The CEO has got to address it. We're having employee engagement issues and the HR managers. And in fact, the CEO comes in and deal it. So at the end of the day, we have what I call leader led accountable environments. And that's, as a CEO, I felt like it was all on my shoulders. I was the only one awake at two o'clock in the morning.
And why weren't they dealing with this? So I said, okay, we're going to get the team now to manage it. they had five days to go off on their own and figure out how we're going to, you know, fix this. So they actually got pretty good at problem solving. They would do a root cause analysis and figure out, okay, what's going wrong.
And they'd come up with ideas of what we could do to fix it. They develop a plan and Friday afternoon in my office, two o'clock [00:15:00] standing meeting, they would come into my office and say, here's what we're going to do to fix it. Now I didn't have to accept a bad answer. I mean, if they gave a really lame plan, I could say, try again, but I'll tell you what, 99 times out of a hundred, everything they came up with is way better than anything I can come up with. In fact, I discovered my only job was just to challenge whatever they presented me with, because this has, I wanted to make sure everyone in the room was bought into the solution. And the craziest thing started to happen. of a sudden, my sales manager started to worry about cash. He's like, you know what?
We're going to start charging everything. Cause that gives us 30 extra days of cash. And you know what? We're going to have to fire that customer because they don't pay us. Up until that point, he could have cared less. All he really wanted was the revenue. Cash was, Oh, that's the CFO's problem to go get. And now he's accountable for all these things and they're starting to help each other and they're working together. So up until that point, he had revenue. My CFO had the EBITA and cash. now all of a sudden they're in on all these things. And so the metrics in and of themselves created a [00:16:00] shared fate. there's other ways to create shared fate. A common enemy creates shared fate. I have a client in Vancouver who used to own the largest soccer supply store in all of Canada a long time ago. And he'll tell the story of how they weren't a very functional leadership team until the day Adidas woke up and realized, There's a pretty big soccer market in Canada and they went into direct competition with them because Eric, for the next three years, our mission every day coming to work was to keep Adidas out of Canada.
He well, of course we lost, but we did things in those three years I never dreamed possible. I sold the business for way more than I ever would have. All because we were bonded around this common enemy, which was Adidas. Making it hard to get on the team creates a shared fate. Proximity creates a shared fate.
You want to create a shared fate in your team? Bring them all together in a conference room and say, Guys, for the next four weeks we're going to work together in this room. Bring your laptops. Oh yeah, instantaneous shared fate. Well, it'll be too noisy. Talk quiet. Well, I need to make a private phone call.
Go [00:17:00] back to your office. tell you, three fourths of my clients that have done that, the leadership team has never gone back. A lot of them, they're all in one large room, and they're hanging against the wall, because you know what? Because we're talking to each other. And it freaks the rest of the organization out, because all of a sudden, the leadership team is getting along well.
Because up until that point, it was, you know, mom versus dad, I could play one off the other, and now all of a sudden, hey, look, they're functioning, right? So proximity can create shared fate. Compensation can create shared fate. Going through difficult situations together creates shared fate. Remember back early stages of COVID, for like one or two weeks, all humanity was connected because we were going through this thing together, right? And then we fractured again. But there was a short period of time where we all looked into each other's eyes and like, we're in this together. That created a shared fate. the point is, there are all sorts of ways to create a shared fate. When you want good examples, go home tonight, watch Miracle on Ice, or Apollo 13, or Saving Private Ryan, remember the Titans. They're all true stories of teams that did [00:18:00] extraordinary stuff just because the leader knew how to build a shared fate. Right? So there's lots of ways to do it, but it's something the leader really has to create.
Mike Goldman: In your intro, one of the things I said, was, had to do with destroying the organizational hierarchy. Talk to me about what you mean by that, because so far in what we've talked about, Powerful stuff. but I think the hierarchy is still depending on how you define hierarchy, right? but the hierarchy is as I would normally define it as still in place.
What do you mean by, by destroying the organizational hierarchy?
Eric Coryell: It's a little bit of a bold statement, but, it is actually what I'm in pursuit of. And so let me kind of give you a little, well, how I kind of came to this realization. So,someone once pointed this out to me and it really changed my perspective, but he goes, Eric. Where did the organizational hierarchical structure come from?
And I'm like, I don't know. He goes, the military. the early 1900s, a company [00:19:00] started to scale, right? We got bigger. We went from an artisan environment to industrial environment. We had to figure out how to organize everybody. And what we did is we adopted the military model. Okay. The Romans get the credit, right?
And in the military of the generals, you have the officers and you have the soldiers. And that's the way the military is structured. So if you break that down and oversimplify it, what are the generals here to do? Well, they're here to do the thinking, the strategy, and the vision. What are the soldiers here to do?
Well, they're here to do what they're told. We want you to think, but not that much, right? Just do what you're told. what becomes the role of these officers? Well, the role of the officers really is to take that thinking, translate it into action, tell the soldiers what to do, but then they have to make sure that they actually do it. I think these officers exist to a great degree to hold the soldiers accountable, to make sure they do what they are told. And that's the military model. And if you think about it from a military perspective, it worked really well in the old days. World War I, World War II, maybe Germany, but there was a different time.
It was a slow moving wars and Eisenhower brought his brain trust together. [00:20:00] They spent like six months coming up with a strategy on how to take Normandy, finally developed the strategy, told the soldiers to go take Normandy, we took Normandy. And it was the same process over and over, thinking, telling, doing, thinking, telling. Well, that strategy doesn't work for the military well anymore. If you, in our, we just figured this out during the war in Iraq, there's a really good book called the team of teams written by General McChrystal who talked about how that structure really hurt us because the world moves faster and that structure doesn't move very quick.
We need to make decision making closer to the action. Well, the decision making is made higher up. And we need high levels of teamwork and that structure doesn't promote teamwork. I quickly realized, you know what, that's no different in business because in business, instead of generals, we have CEOs, instead of officers, we have middle managers, instead of soldiers, we have frontline workers. And I realized that if we were to create an extraordinary organization, I had to change all that, right? I had to get people to pay attention to the customer. I had to get people to function better together and had to move decision making down, right? So I did all the stuff. I mean, we did ropes courses, trust [00:21:00] falls. We went white river rafting. We read the five dysfunctions of teams. I mean, I created a customer delight program and none of it worked. So I finally realized something. If I were to go deep inside the heart and soul of a frontline employee, which direction are they truly most concerned with? Are they looking towards the customer? Are they looking to their teammates or are they looking at their boss? And I'm like, well, it's the boss. That's the person that sets the expectations they have to meet. That's the person that takes their accountability away if they don't get the job done. That's the person that shows where they get a raise or where they keep their job. So all I can be doing all this stuff at the end of the day, every employee really is looking up at their boss. And it worked that way all the way up the organizational chart when I quickly realized was everyone's rear end was facing the customer and they're all looking at me. And if we were to create an organization, much like the military has figured out, we had to change that.
Well, how do you change that? Well, that structure exists to manage accountability because I don't think you can hold anybody [00:22:00] accountable. When someone says, I'm going to hold you accountable. All they're really saying is I'm taking the accountability from you. So the question becomes, how do you create a team based organization?
How do you move decision making down? How do you get people to face in the right direction and still manage accountability? Well, the answer I stumbled on is if you can get the team to become accountable okay, now all that can happen, will figure out who their customer is, whether it's internal or external or both. And when things get go wrong, they get together and they address the issues. now we have a different way around which we can manage accountability. Well, if you get really good at doing that, now you can rethink the organizational structure. Instead, you can build the organizational structure around workflows and build accountable teams around that workflow. And what that does is it addresses all those issues because now we'll create a customer facing organization, whether it's internal or external, right? We're managing accountability in the team, which promotes teamwork. So before, you know, the problem is everyone was doing their job, but they were at odds with each other. [00:23:00] sales here to do? Generate sales. What do you need to do that? Lots of inventory. What's purchasing here to do minimize inventory. So here we are doing the right things on behalf of our accountability, but now we're working at odds of each other. Same thing with sales and marketing, right?
So now what happens? We put them together in a team. So now how do we generate sales and optimize inventory? So now we are working together towards the same goals and it's an and statement, not an either or statement. So it takes a lot of courage because as a leader, I got to get comfortable letting go of control, right?
At the same time, it takes a higher level of adulthood because now as a team member, I have to step up and do the things that heretofore I've always looked at the leader to take care of. If I've got a non performing teammate, well, that's the boss's problem. Now that's a conversation we're going to have to have . But once you get good at doing this, okay, it totally changes your organization and that's destroys the hierarchy. I've been preaching this for years, and quite frankly, it's fallen upon deaf [00:24:00] ears. And so my focus, much like yours, has been, look, let's just get the leadership team to become functional, accountable.
And because if mom and dad aren't functioning, the kids have very little chance. what's driving the change now is the Millennials and the Gen x's If you're familiar with a great resignation, what the average turnover of an employee, 35 and under is a year and three quarters, it's up from a year and a half. So it's getting better.
Okay. And I've been listening to CEOs talk forever about what a bad generation they are. They just don't work on those kinds of things. You know, as an older guy myself, I discovered something. just different. They grew up in a very different environment than we did. I'll look at my own daughter.
She's 22, right? She grew up in an environment playing video games. She got feedback all the time. She had a dad. She failed.
I'm like, Hey, good try. Just try again, right? She very rarely got criticized. She grew up much more aware of the world. So it's how she walks in the workforce. She's not used to being told she's not good.
she's used to being getting constant feedback. You walk into a hierarchical structure. Well, how often do you get feedback? Once a year, [00:25:00] maybe, and if you're told by another human being, you're bad, she doesn't know what to do with that. So she starts crying and quit, right? And she wants to make an impact.
She wants to be on a team. She wants to be part of something bigger than herself. The accountable team model supports that. The hierarchical model is what's causing the problem because these generations don't fit so they quit.
Well, if you get good at creating accountable teams, guess what? Now you can attract or retain what I've discovered to be actually really good generations.
They just work differently. But you got to put them in a position that fits who they are. that's why I'm convinced in a while, take a while. But the way we structure organizations is going to change because even the military has figured it out. The military, if you go inside the military and you talk to the military leaders, they're all going team based.
We're doing SEALs teams, we're doing ranger teams, because these teams have to be able to make decisions on the fly. So our job is to set the teams up so they can do what they need to do when it comes time to work. It's no different inside the organization. It's just going to take time for us to get there.
Mike Goldman: So, so to make it real, the example I'm thinking of [00:26:00] in my head is a cross functional team that may be more focused on. A client or a number of clients
Eric Coryell: yes,
Mike Goldman: that team is representation of someone who is doing the selling someone from the service side, someone who may be managing the inventory, someone who's more financial, but it's that cross functional
Eric Coryell: a cross
Mike Goldman: team.
Eric Coryell: And that's the way it works.
And now the key here, and this is probably the most important lesson I've learned, is a lot of companies have tried this, and they've gone to what the matrix organization is, right? So they create the cross functional teams. The mistake, however, is these people report to somebody outside the team. So for example, we may have three cross functional teams. We have engineering on each and these engineers report to the engineering manager and what I've discovered is that doesn't work, the matrix. I've never seen it work. I'm convinced it can't because now you have, in this case, an engineer who's accountable to the team.
But at the day, all they really care about is the engineering manager because that's the person that can fire me, et cetera. So to make it work, you got to get the [00:27:00] team to become accountable. So they do the performance reviews. They do this. Do you still need engineering manager? Absolutely. But they're now a coach.
They don't have reports. Now I'm here. I can flex in and help out. I can coach people. I can develop people, make sure we're using the right software.and I get to be an engineering coach now. And at first, you know, the senior management tends to resist it. It's like, I'm not going to be needed. Once you get to the other side, they love it because I'm no longer an adult daycare.
I can now do what I love to do, which is be an engineer, be a purchasing manager, you know, or be an employee, you know, HR manager, whatever that is.
key is you got to get these teams to become accountable to each other. They do their own performance reviews. They do all that kind of stuff. And they're accountable to the team metrics. still have coaches, but no one reports to them. And that's the part that's the hardest thing to make a reality. Because as leaders, I mean, it sounds good at paper, but it freaks me out. Once you get to the other side, you're like, this is heaven.
Mike Goldman: So have you had Any success in trying to implement that with any clients, or is it still [00:28:00] more of a, Hey, future state one day I'm going to make this happen, but you haven't really gotten there yet.
Eric Coryell: I'm just starting to have success with it and it's been a long I did it with my company, right? so I know what could happen. I kind of stumbled on it. I wish I could tell you I was so smart. I figured this out. Right. but no, so yeah, I've had pockets, you know, and the funny part is everyone's like, go show me a place.
This is a work. I'm like, okay, so we go see them and like, well, they're different than us.
Mike Goldman: Well, yeah.
Eric Coryell: like, stop doing that. I'm like, look, you either believe in this or you don't, right. I can help you figure out what you need to do to get there. And you're, you know, every company is different, right? It's a river raft journey.
It's going to be a different river for everybody. But after you do this enough, you kind of can predict where the stumbling points are going to be. Like, how do you handle raises and all this kind of stuff? And that's all the stuff you got to figure out along the way.
But yeah, the success ratio is really low.
People get super excited and then we get into it and people literally get scared. And it's usually the leader that freaks out the [00:29:00] most. and I always liken it to coaching, right? For those people who have coached soccer or little league, right? You know, I'll tell you, during the game it's kind of a helpless feeling. Because you just want to run out there and tell them what to do or do it for them. But you can't, right? In order to be a good coach, I got to put them in positions to be successful and every good coach will tell you that's the game, Well it's no different here at work. So it's the same thing. I got to put her in positions, be successful, but I can't run and make the plays. It's one thing. If I'm coaching soccer, a little thing, it's another thing. If it's my second mortgage, if it's my financial future, it's my reputation. So. It's scary because what happens if the team fails, right? And so my tendency is to want to jump in and take control and make it happen. key is you got to put the team in a position so they can manage their own accountability.
Yeah, every team's going to fail at some point, but they course correct and get back on track. I've discovered is most team, most organizations are more resilient. They can handle a little bit of failure as long as once we fail, we start fixing it. But for me as a leader, I'll speak for myself. I was too, [00:30:00] I wanted my team to be accountable, but at the end of the day, I wanted all the control. I finally realized you can't have both. And that is the single biggest challenge in making this a reality is the leader's inability or unwillingness to let go.
Mike Goldman: If we stepping back from that future state, which is super interesting, and I can go down,
Eric Coryell: Sure.
Mike Goldman: could probably spend three hours with me with questions on that.
but I want to bring it back to where most people are now, which is in a more of a traditional hierarchy. And I'll tell you one of the problems I've seen, and I just want to, I want to understand what your experience has been.
There are a lot of things I've seen that hold. My clients back from truly being able to hold each other accountable. And I love your,your, idea of it's not just the leader holding each of the members of the team accountable. It's the team holding themselves accountable and each other accountable.
One of the [00:31:00] challenges I've seen there or the obstacles there is the leader. Is the CEO who models the worst behavior? I remember years ago I was working with a company, a flooring company, and I was working with the CEO and the leadership team. And every time I talked to the CEO, he would get on the phone and give and just rant and rave about everybody else.
Who is not doing what they committed to do. And I think I'm going to have to fire everybody. I don't know what to do. And then I'd say,yeah, you know, that sounds really tough, but you know, you know, I know last time we talked, you were going to have that company wide meeting where you're going to talk about X, Y, and Z do the knowing damn well, he didn't do it, but I would bring that up and he'd say, Oh yeah, I, you know, I didn't get that done because this stuff got in the way and.
You know, he was modeling poor accountability for everyone else and wondering why no one else was truly being accountable and [00:32:00] honoring their commitments. So I've seen the leader modeling a lack of accountability. So often, what have you seen there? Do you, have you seen that to be a challenge as well?
and if so, how have you dealt with that?
Eric Coryell: Sure. yeah, I think it's a challenge for everybody, right, in terms of holding people accountable. And I think the single biggest struggle, the biggest challenge in doing a lot of this stuff, especially if you want to go from a leader led accountable environment. So, I mean, clearly, if the leader's job is to manage accountability and then they don't do it, It all falls apart, right?
So we put this expectation on the leader to do everything right? Have the vision, track progress, manage the team, you know, manage the individual performers and that's your job and hold all that accountable. Well, it's a unicorn. That's really good at doing all those things, right? So the concept of accountable teams is all right. now has to do those things, okay? And the leader just has to make sure it's happening. and so it takes the pressure off [00:33:00] the leader to be perfect at managing everyone and being accountable because I've never met a leader who's perfect at holding everyone accountable all the time, right? And it's an unfair expectation. But the real problem with that is if the leader's managing accountability, everyone's looking up to the leader. And that's just creates that upward leader organization we're talking about. So, yeah, I think it's a leader. it's any human being struggles to manage their accountability. But the thing that is you make a transition from a leader led accountable environment to a team accountable environment, one of the first things we have to do is we got to create clarity around what is the team going to be accountable for and what is the leader going to be accountable for. what decisions does the leader get to make and which decisions do the team members get to make or which decisions are team decisions, right? So one of the most important tools and making that happen is to map all that out. We're going to talk about here, all the decisions, and it's almost always an eyeopening experience because as you list all the decisions, okay, so what are they?
Well, firing a direct report or hiring someone to the team or deciding who to hire or raising prices or switched [00:34:00] out suppliers or changing banking relationships or spending money, boom, list them all out. Now the question is, which of these decisions is the leader going to continue to make? Like, so the leader may say, if you want to fire a direct report before you do it, you got to run up past me and I get the right to say no, which means it's my decision. So it's kind of a level one decision, or it's a level two decision, which means go do, you know, do it. But before you do it, come talk to me. I trust you to make the right decision, but I want to at least challenge your thinking, right? And make sure you think about the right things, but it's your call. Or a level three, which means it's your call.
Do it. Just tell me about it afterwards, or it's level four. I didn't want to know about it. And so we go through and map all these out and we'll paint a picture. very often, sometimes they're all ones and the leader just wants all the control. Well, guess what? You're never going to have an accountable team.
If you're making every decision, you can't expect the team to be accountable for profitability. If you're doing the pricing decisions,
Mike Goldman: And you're never going to scale the business that way.
Eric Coryell: never going to scale the business. So I got stories there. Yes. I had one client had 108 decisions [00:35:00] at the leadership team level. 90 of them ended up being ones they had plateaued out at 7 million.
And then
Mike Goldman: Shocking.
Eric Coryell: I discovered why we haven't grown is I'm making every decision, right? So that tool in itself will paint a picture, but then the real key becomes, all right, if you want to. Change this and you got to change. we got to get the team to be able to be accountable for the things that they're asked to be accountable for.
So if they're coming for profitability, they better have to final say on pricing, for example, right. So yeah, the whole accountability piece is such a nebulous piece. And I just, my experience is we expect every leader. to do all that work. And that's the, there's a guy named Wilford Bion. He's kind of the founder of all group dynamic thinking.
Mike Goldman: And he said, the basic humanist mental state is to assume that the leader is going to make it okay. Simon Sinek wrote a book on this. Leaders eat last. That our default feeling is that we run out of food. The leader eats last. We go into war, the leader goes in first . And so we look, there's a core human desire that the leader is going to make it all okay. [00:36:00] And so the team wants the very thing for which the leader wants, which is control. And so all our natural tendencies feed that, right? But if you want to change it, then the lead has got to get comfortable letting go of control. And the team members have to step up and take accountability How do you.
How do you factor in normally when we think about accountability, we're thinking about accountability for going out there and producing something. And you talked about, you know, when you talked about the different levels, you know, having the right measures was one of those, but there's also accountability for.
a fit within the culture, behaving in a certain way, living core values, whatever, however you have defined the culture.
How do you factor into, to this idea of accountability, not just the numbers, but the behaviors and being a culture fit. and when I think culture fit, if you're the right culture fit, You make the [00:37:00] people around you better.
When you're the wrong culture fit, you make the people around you worse.
Eric Coryell: That's
Mike Goldman: How does the culture fit part factor in to your idea of accountability?
Eric Coryell: So we talked to the very beginning about real issues, right? So a real issue is any issue that affects the team's ability to be successful. So one of the things with the metrics is that's going to surface real issues, right? We're not hitting sales. So as we go to problem solve it, it's going to surface real issues.
But you make a really good point. There are other things that get to real issues, and that's just how we are functioning day in, day out. We, I may be hitting the numbers. We may be hitting the numbers, but the other day I'm being a jerk or whatever that is. And so the other source of real issues will come from real issue conversations around how we function and how we behave. Well, inside most teams, if you think about it, you got leader A and you got all the team members, right? If I'm person B, whose expectations do I need to understand in me? Well, it's A. If I'm person C, whose expectations do I need to understand and meet? A. You know, and that's true in most teams. Everyone's here trying to understand what the leader's expecting, and I'm [00:38:00] looking to make sure I'm meeting that. At the end of the day, that's not really a team. Well, if we do the accountable team thing, then if I'm person B, whose expectations do I need to understand and meet? It's everybody's. But the problem is we've never agreed to those expectations. So the first thing any team's got to do is set the deal of what does it mean to be a high performing team member on this team, right? And everyone's going to have a different list. So everyone builds the list on their own, right? And we come to the table and say, okay, Eric, what do you got? I think to be a high performer, you need to be accountable and you need to be competent in your job and you need to be a learner and you're not chauvinist or whatever those things are that are important to me. And then we put the next person's list, next person says, well, I think you need to have a positive attitude or whatever, right? We build the list and now we have to come to an agreement around, is everyone in agreement on this list? I did this once. So that's one of my favorite stories. Someone wrote, have a positive attitude. And another team member goes, can't. That's just not an expectation [00:39:00] that I think is a fair expectation. I just can't have a positive attitude every day. I'm like, okay, what can you commit to? And he goes, I'll commit to not being destructive. So they changed it to have a productive attitude and they can all live with that.
Right. So once you have the deal, as you talked about, right, this is what it means. This is base level of being this team. Now the question is who's perfect at all these things. Nobody Right. So we have to talk about, okay, what can everyone improve on? I mean, I'm certainly not, so I want everyone in the room to identify the three things in this list you think I can improve on the most.
I'll do it too. We all do. We throw it on the board, sure enough, the biggest issue for Eric is asking for help. So now we have to have a conversation around this or what needs to change and why is it such a problem when you don't ask for help? And we work through it. So now we're performance reviews are done together as a group, so we are now talking to each other and not anonymous, just with each other on how we can improve. Now, some of these things are non negotiables, right? If you're not accountable, if you're not confident, your job, [00:40:00] etcetera. I mean, those air grounds on which you can't be on this team, and it's also a function of what the Or the intolerables of the team, because I'll argue a culture of any organization is really a function of the intolerables. What gets you fired from an organization? I can't tell you often I walk in and you've got this wonderful list of core values. We're not here. Send them employees, send a group of employees out for dinner some night and have them make a list of everything they think will get you fired from your organization. Those are your values. That's what's governing their behavior, right? So what are the things that are going to get you kicked off this team? Well, one of my intolerables is chauvinism. And I'll tell you, if you're on my team and you're chauvinistic, there's only three outcomes.
I'm either going to get you to change your behavior because I don't tolerate it. I'm going to get you off the team because I don't tolerate it if you're not going to change. And if I can't do either one of those, my only choice is to quit. Iif I stay, it's not an intolerable. Okay. So as long as I'm on this team, there will be no chauvinism. That's just a non negotiable, right? So, we have to learn to talk about these things. And through that process, now we have those conversations [00:41:00] and what you said. we, those are all critical components of a team being able to function, but it's unique and different for every team, but it's also the sum total of the team members in the room.
Mike Goldman: How does If it impacts it at all, the, I,the remote work environments, the hybrid work environments. I'll tell you what I've seen on the good side of that, and I've seen a whole lot of challenges and some folks are saying, everybody's got to come back to work, but one of the things I've seen is when it comes to holding people accountable for a level of productivity,
Eric Coryell: Yes.
Mike Goldman: although no leader would admit to this.
The way a lot of leaders used to measure and some still measure productivity is by how long and hard someone is working, which I think is the worst measure imaginable for that. But remote work to, to the good side of it has challenged Some [00:42:00] of some good leaders to say, ah, I need to come up with a better measure of productivity, which has nothing to do with.
So, so there's some good that has come, but what have you seen in this, these days of remote and hybrid work? How has that impacted your ideas on accountability, your processes of accountability, or do the same things apply, whether it's in person or remote?
Eric Coryell: I'll say the same things apply. all the fundamentals we talked about with teams, it still applies remote, but there's two things and you just nailed one of them and it took me a long time to figure that out, that into manage accountability in a hybrid environment, you have to change criteria around what performance is.
And I think that is such an important, and astute point. There's one other piece of the puzzle, however, that's critically important. I'll try to articulate this succinctly. Okay. Our greatest need as humans is our need to be connected to other people. If a baby isn't held physically enough in its first five to nine months of life, the baby [00:43:00] will literally die. Around the age of five months, the need for physical connection begins to morph into a need for mental connection, and it's true for all of us. All of us need to maintain some level of meaningful mental connection to other people. If we lose that, we will literally die as well. So if you accept that to be true, that is our greatest biological need as humans.
And I am convinced that is true.being part of a team is a necessary part for our survival. And so creating connection for that team, you know, creating connection to that team is vital for the team's health because as humans, we all need it. The problem with remote workforce is that it becomes much harder to create that connection. A lot of times that connection is created around the coffee pot or, you know, after work. and now that we're hybrid, the connection doesn't know what's happen. If you remember very early on, as soon as COVID hit, we did a lot of virtual happy hours, right? And we created the connection, but that kind of went away really quickly. you have the problem while we may have our metrics, right? There still isn't the connection to the team. [00:44:00] what happens for the remote workers is, I'm not feeling connected to my work team, I gotta go get that connection somewhere. Well guess where it now is? It's with my dog, it's with my friends, it's with everything but work. So one of the challenges with the remote workforce, and I agree with you, there are some good about it. but it is creating that connection and making that connection work based and not just everything else. And when all these CEOs said, Hey, you're never coming back to the office. I'm laughing to myself because I know this need for connection.
I'm like, it can't last now. It may not be five days a week. Okay. But unless you can find really strong ways to create connection with the work. long term it, it's not a viable strategy. 'cause now you have people that just aren't connected to the work and you need to get that connection to be able to have the tough conversations and all that kinda stuff.
So I'm not connected to the team. I don't really care.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, that, that's a,I love what you said. It's so important. I think it's going to be a difficult road ahead because my daughter, you said your daughter's [00:45:00] 22, my daughter's 28 and she has spent the last four or five years, whatever it's been working remotely. They never went back to work.
Eric Coryell: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: And. Her attitude and my nephew's the same way and
Eric Coryell: her attitude is if they want me to go back to work, I'm quitting.
Mike Goldman: I'm like, they're, they believe the remote, that's the way to go. Why would I ever want to go into an office? Because it's all right. It's all they know. They haven't seen the bonds that, you know, Can be created and are created. So I think it's going to be a difficult road, probably a topic for a whole other, other,
Eric Coryell: decades.
Mike Goldman: but I want to, as we, we start to wrap up, talk a little bit about what you do and how you help your clients.
Eric Coryell: Oh, well, it's kind of what we've been talking about today. It's very similar along the lines of what you're doing is, and you know, it's important what you're doing because it's, it usually starts with a leadership team, right? Because unless the leadership team is on board with being an accountable team. You're going to struggle doing this inside the [00:46:00] organization. So a lot of the work I do is first of all, helping everyone just look at things differently. and if they get past that, right, if they like, okay, I see there's a different way, right? Now the question is, how do you apply it in your organization?
You know, there's a whole range. I mean, there's What I'll call the Grand Slam, you know, which is getting to that point where you're rethinking the organization structure. but with some organizations, it's just getting the leadership team to become more functional and accountable.
And a lot of leaders, if I could just get that, I can sleep better at night. A lot of times I'll see CEOs, they're like, I want to sell the business. But if I go, this company falls apart. Right. So I got to get accountability managed differently. Right. So, you know, Part of my job is to understand, okay, where, what do you want to see different?
And, you know, with as little investment in me as possible, how do I help you get there? Right. And so some of it's education. Some of it is, you know, you got to work with them. but more and more now, there's only. One me I find myself spending more time with those that are like, Hey, I really want to change it because I think that's [00:47:00] where the real home runs hit.
We created what I call an adult organization where our employees are truly functioning like adults. And I'm not an adult daycare anymore. And so it varies by client. so, but that's what makes it fun. Right? Every day
Mike Goldman: Yeah. Excellent. And where,
Eric Coryell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Goldman: yeah. and if someone is interested in finding out more, working with you, where should they go?
Eric Coryell: Well, I have a basic website, which will kind of get you started. it's accountableteams.com
um, the book, it's a very short read. It's a one hour publishing firm came to me and said, Hey, we've been looking for unique material accountability and teams. We think this is it. We write the book. I'm like, sure.
But we believe every business books too long. I'm like, I agree. You're like, perfect. You only get 12, 000 words. Write the book, which proved to be really hard. Right? So oftentimes I'll tell people just Buy the book. You can get it on Amazon really cheap. It's called revolutionized teamwork. Read it. If it hits well, or if it sits well, right, then you're like, okay, feels right, let's talk, and then very often you can reach out to me, [00:48:00] you know, my emails, eric@accountableteams.com
RIght. and then we can just say, Hey, is this a fit for you or not? And then we figure out how to go from there.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. Why I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team, Eric, thanks for getting us there today.
Eric Coryell: hopefully it's helpful and real pleasure spending time together.