accountability

culture driven

Accountability by Design – Culture Driven Accountability

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So far in this blog series, we have covered how consequences, processes and strong leadership work together to create an accountable by design organisation. In this article, we will talk about the fourth driver – culture. Unlike the previous three drivers that can be governed by the organisation, culture driven accountability is often quite slippery. If not systematically defined, practiced and consciously spoken about, it may be determined entirely by the behaviour of the employees – whether or not this is what was desired in the first place. For this reason, it is crucial to define the desired culture at an organisational level – one that actively promotes accountable behaviour – and proactively drive the same. Here are five key aspects you should look to build in to your culture when building an accountable by design organisation. 1. Create a result-focused approach: Organisational cultures often tend to lean more towards being effort focused, rather than result focused. This results in people setting activities instead of goals (Call 20 potential clients as opposed to Acquire 2 new clients). Activities do not necessarily result in success or high performance. While it is important to encourage people to do their best and recognise the effort they put in, accountability and performance will only grow if they are expected to deliver on the final result. 2. Encourage peer influence: A culture strong on peer influence is one where the employees freely question their team members to ensure that work is done as per the expectations. Employees feel accountable not towards the management but towards each other, and mutually drive each other to perform. 3. Credit-sharing is key: Try to create a culture where everyone is quick to give credit where credit is due. This happens when the focus is on the larger goals being achieved and not just on the individual work being done. Help your employees understand that openly stating that they were helped by others does not take away from their own efforts towards the final result. Praise, recognition and appreciation should not feel like a limited pie. 4. Build a culture of trust: Unfortunately, it is very common for employees to keep information and resources from one other in the fear that others will get ahead. It is important for your employees to understand that sharing knowledge, asking for help and stepping in for each other will only help the organisation grow and prosper. A culture of trust is built when everyone knows that they will be appreciated and acknowledged for their contribution to achieving the larger goal. 5. Finally, push for collaboration: This is a little counter-intuitive because popular accountability literature suggests that there should always be one person in charge of a particular task to avoid diffusion of responsibility. While this is true, if you are able to successfully build a culture strong on peer influence, credit sharing and trust, employees will be more than willing to collaborate with each other to get the job done, even when there is one person in charge of the task. There’s a common misconception that cultures just happen to an organisation, however, this is far from true. Cultures need to be defined, taught, monitored and constantly spoken about. Employees need to know what is expected of them in various scenarios and the appropriate behaviours to demonstrate. With time and care, this will become an ingrained part of the organisation, with every new employee seamlessly fitting into the flow of things. This seamless fitting is what defines an accountable by design organisation. In our next and final article in this series, we will talk about the last driver – person driven accountability – to address the softer training needs that may need to be passed on systematically to every employee.

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Accountability by Design – Leader Driven

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In this series so far, we have talked about two of the five drivers of an accountable by design organisation. The first addressed how having the right consequences greatly influences the extent to which employees are motivated to behave accountably. The second touched upon how having the right processes in place. Those that are agile, well-defined, and uniformly communicated and executed – ensure that employees are almost unconsciously nudged towards demonstrating accountability. From this article onwards, we’ll move more towards the people side of building an accountable by design organisation, through leader driven and culture driven designs. This week’s driver is no surprise. It is well-established that the behaviour of people in positions of power in the organisation, significantly influence the behaviour of the other employees. Leaders at all levels in the organisation have the power to actively promote accountable behaviour through their actions. The corollary, however, is that if they are not careful, their actions can negatively impact accountability, turning employees cynical with a “Why should I?”  or a “What’s the point?”  attitude. In an accountable by design organisation, anyone taking on leadership or management roles is trained to demonstrate certain skills. They need to abide by a fixed leadership framework to ensure that they actively help promote accountable behaviour in the organisation. Here are five things to encourage in your leaders to promote an accountable by design–leader driven organisation. Ensure that they clearly set expectations Leaders need to be able to clearly put into words what they want from each of their team members. Without this, timing, quality, performance among other aspects of an outcome, are left purely to the discretion of individual employees. The clearer the expectations and goals are, the easier it will be for employees to know how they are expected to behave in a given scenario. Linking this with the previous two drivers, the clearer the expectations, the simpler it will be for employees to know which processes to put in play and what rewards they can expect for a job well done.   Encourage them to lead by example This one is fairly self-explanatory. Your leaders need to understand the importance of practicing what they preach. Nothing brings down accountable behaviour faster than leaders who ask their team to do something they don’ t do themselves. If they are ever in a situation where they cannot, open and honest communication with their teams can go a long way in making sure there is no feeling of unfairness. Hold them back from micro-managing The natural instinct of most leaders is to step in and help out wherever they can and especially when it comes to making decisions. This often leads to team members demonstrating less accountability because “I was just doing what I was told to”. Having leaders make decisions for them reduces the need for them to feel responsible or accountable for the final outcome. To create an accountable by design organisation, help your leaders define broad boundaries within which the decision making is entirely in the hands of their team members. This would help them both feel more accountable for the work they are doing, while also enabling them to slowly take on more and more responsibility. Make sure they create an environment of trust It is important for leaders to trust their team members and their ability to do the task at hand. If team members do not feel trusted, it almost primes them for failure. They may not put in the required effort and may be quick to blame their apparent incompetence. This is in case they do not do the job well. The default setting of a leader in an accountable by design organisation needs to be trust. With the right processes and consequences in place, this almost blind trust becomes a lot easier. Help them enable their team members to perform Finally, leaders need to set their teams up for success. They’ll need to be quick to provide the necessary guidance, support, and resources that are needed. This helps the team members feel empowered to give it their all with no room for excuses. The more you take away the possibility of excuses and enable them to do their best, the more likely they are to demonstrate accountable behaviour. Unlike the processes and consequences earlier discussed, the leader driven design has a lot to do with the individual capabilities of the leaders. However, by having a well-defined leadership framework, a standardized leadership on-boarding program, and strong selection criteria for choosing empathetic and competent leaders, accountable behaviour can be driven very positively by those in positions of power. Next week, we will explore the fourth driver, another one from the people side of an accountable by design organisation – the culture.

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consequence driven accountability

Accountable by design – Consequence Driven Accountability

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It’s well known in the professional world that accountability is extremely important for success. The question is whether to build accountability at an individual level or an organizational one? We’ve worked with HR Heads who want to identify their least accountable employees and put them through rigorous training programs. We’ve also worked with HR Heads who want to run culture building interventions to ensure that the culture promotes self-governing, accountable behaviour across the organisation. While working with over 300 organisations for the last 12 years, we’ve spent a lot of time looking into how organisations function, trying to see if there is one right way to drive accountability. Training non-accountable individuals has shown some success, as have certain culture building initiatives. However, the more we worked with organisations, the more we realised that the need of the hour is accountability by design – to create an organisation that by its very functioning, its regular day-to-day functioning, is able to drive accountability, almost like clockwork, without depending on individual employees and their innate tendency to behave accountably. We’ve zeroed in on 5 core drivers that seem to hold the key to this idea of accountability by design. In this blog post, I’ll talk a bit about the first of these drivers. There’s been a lot written about the carrot and stick method of driving performance. While we know now that this is not the best way to motivate people to work, there is something to be said about the value of consequences. From what we’ve found, one of the drivers of creating an accountable by design organisation is having the right consequences associated with performance. Essentially this means having a consequence that employees value and think are worthwhile and fair. Here are five ways of making sure your organisational accountability by design is consequence driven. 1. Define clear and precise consequences: Employees need to know exactly what is expected of them to get the rewards or recognition that they desire. The more subjective and vague the criteria, the less likely it is for the consequences to drive the desired behaviour. Come up with realistic and achievable, yet not necessarily easily attainable, criteria for rewarding your employees. 2. The consequences must be relevant in the short term: Organisations value employees that are reliable, who work hard and always deliver quality output. These are the employees that come to mind whenever there are exciting new projects, promotions or other opportunities for career growth. Unfortunately, because of the superior level at which they perform, they may often be overlooked for smaller, regular, short term rewards. To encourage accountable behaviour, ensure that there are significant short term reward schemes in place. Something as simple as public appreciation or small gift cards will do. Now, employees do not need to wait indefinitely to be recognised for their good work. 3.The consequence must be relevant in the long term: Accountable by design organisations are all about balance. Public appreciation and gift cards help with instant gratification for a job well done. This increases the likelihood that they’ll repeat the same behaviour. However, this is not enough. With time, this instant gratification will not have the desired result, unless people know it is all adding up to something more significant. Make sure there is enough reason for employees to continue to demonstrate accountable behaviour by defining objective long term rewards as well. 4. Ensure that any consequence commensurates with the task:  Employees need to feel like the reward is worth working towards. If the task takes a lot of effort and the reward is small and inconsequential, they might as well focus their energy elsewhere. Listen to your employees. Understand the effort it takes for each task. Define the rewards accordingly. It is also important to recognise what tasks to reward. If the rewards come by too easily, they lose their value. In fact, this may actually promote non-accountable behaviour with employees thinking that they don’t need to push themselves to do better or to achieve more. 5. The rewards need to be fair: Most importantly, employees need to feel that the rewards are fair and unbiased. This is a mix of defining the reward structure well and communicating the criteria to all employees. What often happens, quite unknowingly, is that some people get recognized for a job well done, while the same work done by others (especially on busy days) often falls through the cracks. This may not seem like a big deal in the larger scheme of things. Some managers say “But they know we appreciate them”. However, it is small instances like this that start to build the “What’s the point?” attitude, typical of non-accountable employees. Before Closing… Finally, I’d like to bring out three points before closing this post. These are questions that I’m sure have come up as you’ve skimmed through the article. One, we have consciously stayed away from talking about the negative consequences of not behaving accountably (punishments, penalties etc.). From our experience and that of those before us, it is evident that building an organisation on fear is unhelpful and is eventually likely to promote unethical behaviour. The idea is to make people value the positives so much that the fear of losing out on them is enough to drive the desired behaviour. Two, there has been a lot of research on intrinsic motivation and how rewards can often negatively impact your already motivated employees. It is key to choose the right consequences for the right tasks to ensure that it feels like a reward and not a bribe. The minute an employee sees as a bribe, it becomes detrimental to driving the desired accountable behaviour. Spend time talking to your employees and understanding what they do, what they want and what keeps them going. The answers for what the right consequence is will only come from them. Finally, as mentioned earlier, this is just one of the five drivers of an accountable by design organisation. All the five

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Accountability

Accountability – An individual trait or a cultural mandate?

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Multiple studies over the years have shown that accountability has a strong impact on organisational performance. Understandably, most organisations are therefore, striving towards increasing the level of accountability in their employees. We talked to a few MDs, CEOs and HR Heads to understand their thoughts on accountability and what they were doing to increase the extent to which it is demonstrated. A few said accountability needs to be assessed during the hiring process. Those showing the required skills and demonstrating a high level of accountability should be hired, while those who seem to shirk responsibility should ideally not be considered for any position in the organisation. According to these leaders, accountable employees make an accountable organisation. Some others said that it had to be taught at a cultural level. Such leaders run organisation-wide initiatives to explain what it means to be accountable and how one should behave accountably in different situations. They also run training programs for people managers at various levels in the organisation so that they can work on building an accountable culture within their teams. Based on this view, an accountable culture results in accountable employees. Interestingly, one CEO mentioned that no matter how hard one tries, one cannot rely on employees to be accountable. She said that to ensure people took ownership and that deliverables were completed on time, very strict processes needed to be implemented. It is the processes and not the people that drive accountability in the organisation, in her opinion. Through our research, our interactions with leaders of organisations of various kinds and our own consulting experience, we found that an accountable organisation is formed through five major influencers or drivers. Together, these five drivers, if demonstrated correctly, have the ability to enhance the level of accountability in the organisation. However, if any of the drivers are not demonstrated as expected, it has the ability to single-handedly bring down the level of accountability, by subtly encouraging employees to behave in a non-accountable fashion. The different drivers are: Leader Driven Accountability – The extent to which the manager’s presence and behaviour influences accountability in employees. Culture Driven Accountability – The extent to which the culture of an organisation, along with its unspoken rules and implications, influences the accountability levels of its employees. Person Driven Accountability – The extent to which employees in the organisation take ownership of their own goals, their team’s goals and the goals of the organisation Process Driven Accountability – The extent to which performance is driven by fixed processes in the organisation and not by individual moods, personalities and productivity levels Consequence Driven Accountability – The extent to which penalties and punishments or rewards and incentives influence the level of accountability shown by employees. We found that each of these five drivers could further be broken down into sub-drivers, or specific perceivable behaviours that determined whether or not the driver was enhancing or pulling down the level of accountability in the organisation. As the drivers indicate, it is not enough to hire accountable employees, or to teach different ways of building an accountable culture, or even to come up with strict rules or processes to ensure on-time, high quality deliverables. Accountable employees may stop behaving accountably if at a culture or consequence level, they do not see the benefit of doing so. Similarly, processes may not be able to drive accountability in a sustained manner amongst the employees, unless they see their leaders practicing and promoting the same. In order to influence the levels of accountability, organisations must be aware of which drivers and sub-drivers have a positive impact on accountability in the organisation and therefore must be leveraged upon, and which ones need to be developed or altered to reduce their negative effects on the behaviour of employees. The first step to fixing the problem is to identify it. Organisations tend to try a variety of interventions, without seeing a visible impact in the level of accountability, primarily because the driver(s) responsible for the current level have not been identified. The Performance Accountability Index (PAI) is a short 50 statement survey that can be administered to all the employees in an organisation to determine the drivers and sub-drivers that help enhance the level of accountability and those that bring it down. It also indicates how each of these drivers appear to be interacting with each other to influence the behaviour of the employees. This allows for targeted interventions to be carried out on the parts of the organisation that require it, increasing the chances of a successful increase in the level of accountability and therefore, in the performance of the organisation. So, individual trait or cultural mandate? One’s individual inclination towards behaving accountably combined with leaders who provide clarity and practice what they preach, processes that provide direction, cultural guidelines that value employees doing their work well and on time, and a system that recognises and rewards accountable behaviour, all work together to create an accountable organisation. Trying to define it as one or the other will most definitely result in crucial parts of accountability being missed out. For more information on how to run PAI in your organisation, or for ideas on how to build a more accountable organisation, contact us at info@hrfootprints.com Is accountability at your organization an individual trait or a cultural mandate? Let’s ensure it’s both. Start transforming your workplace culture—reach out now for a consultation!

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Top 6 characteristics that bind a team together

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From our previous discussions, we understand that, when teams fail to become high performing teams, the work environment will be vitiated, focus will be narrowed to one’s own work irrespective of whether the end goal is achieved or not. Members tend to disown accountability and may resort to blame game, throwing allegations at each other. every time a situation like this arises it is common for the team members to look at the leader to fix the situation. Is it only the leader’s responsibility to keep the whole team together? Do teams have no owns towards the team performance? To answer these questions, let us see how each member of the team can make a meaningful contribution for the team to become high performing team. Here are the top 6 characteristics that bind a team together. Unified goal: It is said that a commonly shared goal will act as a binding force and knits the members together. Now, who should spell out the unified goal? Is the onus on the leader alone? Here while the leader needs to help the team understand the overall goals of the organization, each member can have a contributory role in clearly articulating the common goal. Clarity of roles and responsibilities: Here the onus is equally shared between the leader and the member; it is the leader who should fundamentally clarify while the team member should also make necessary efforts to seek clarity. Passively waiting for the leader to communicate is not going to help the team member. Concern for the end goal: Here the onus is greatly on the team member, it is not sufficient to say that “I have done my job” unless the end goal is achieved successfully. Team member needs to perform the specifically assigned responsibility while keeping an eye on how it is going to contribute to the bigger goal. Customer centricity: Once again, each team member needs to make efforts to understand who the end customer and who the immediate customer is. For example, for a procurement executive, production department may be the immediate customer; however, the procurement executive will be able to contribute to high performance of the team if he/she is equally concerned about the end consumer who may not be directly visible. Relationships: It is common sense, though difficult to measure in quantitative terms, the negative impact of poor relationships among the team members. Lack of positive relationships slows down the business process, hinders information sharing and creates unhealthy organizational dynamics. And these go completely against the spirit of high performance. Therefore, team members need to learn to build informal relationships with peers proactively which will create a healthy work environment and contribute to high performance. Communication: This is almost an extension of earlier point; if there are healthy relationships, there will be seamless communication and better knowledge sharing and alignment among the team members. Each member can take initiative on fostering transparent communication rather than restricting oneself to transaction nature of communication. Responsible and professional team members need to therefore understand that they have a very significant role in creating a team culture and in building a high performing team. While one cannot undermine the role of a leader, one should not trivialize the onus that lies on every team member. One must realize that self-management is more sustainable than relying on one single leader. The above characteristics effectively bind a team together. The message to each team member – irrespective of level in the hierarchy is: “You will be the architect in co-creating a high performing team which makes it easy for you to professionally excel and contribute to higher business performance.”  This article was published in HR MirrorHans IndiaFollow Dr.Raj on Twitter @drraj29

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