Financial accountability doesn’t need to be a bad word.
The definition of accountability means to calculate or give an accounting of. With good people on board, you merely need a process for taking an account of the situation, then making decisions based on that.
In the past week I have worked with three different landscape business owners on the challenge of improving their financial results.
Each conversation circled back to what the leader was doing weekly with their team.
This year (more than past years) raises the important question, ‘What is the role of the leader?‘
Your single most important role is to be a strong, effective communicator.
What should you be communicating?
Communication comes in many flavors, but financially it means this:
- Engage your team in setting the goals,
- Give your people constant updates on their results
- Identify where they are ahead and behind.
- And in those places where you are behind, identify the gaps and ensuring your team takes ownership of closing the gaps.
It’s called financial accountability. Here is how you do this.
7 Steps for Financial Accountability
(Note: This is based on my comprehensive 14-step plan…these are the first seven most critical steps.)
- The company and each division are following an accurate monthly budget, based on ’time tested’ billable and non-billable hours assumptions.
- Crews are given daily feedback on their results regarding their hours and efficiency goals.
- Divisions review their results weekly with their crew leaders, making use of group sharing strategies like ‘forced ranking’.
- The leadership team reviews a company dashboard weekly. Each leader on your team has their own set of numbers to report on.
- Job costing is reviewed frequently and consistently, with feedback given to both crews and estimators.
- Sales goals and actuals are reviewed with your sales team weekly, based on monthly goals (broken into weekly goals as needed).
- Your P&L is reviewed monthly; with all the mainline items assigned to leaders in the room to track and report on.
Even though incentives may be part of your financial game plan, they are only important after you set up this foundation…first things first!
Your Challenge:
Don’t get distracted by the current hullabaloo going on in politics and the papers; keep your team focused on the daily and weekly habits needed to win!
Plan these meetings I have outlined in your calendar right now.
You may feel that you only have an average team, but I guarantee you will achieve above-average results when you raise your game as the financial leader.
And if you tell me your team is actually above average, then I guarantee you will enjoy stellar results with these seven steps.
Some people say to keep your head down and grind it out. Not me. I say, keep your eyes on the scoreboard, and keep communicating the score to your team.
After you have done this, hit reply and let me know how it works out.
