Do you ever feel powerless to hold employees accountable?
I am often told by owners, “I feel powerless to hold my employees accountable, because I can’t afford to fire them.”
Let me clear the air by saying that firing is not a form of accountability, unless you have a culture killer in your midst. If that is the case you can set an example…
To create real accountability you need to understand and enforce Jeffrey’s 5 Types of Accountability: To oneself, To other employees, To one’s supervisor, To the customer, and To the team.
The most important (that you have the most control over) and perhaps the least understood is TEAM accountability. The peer pressure created from team accountability can lift up the individuals and lift up your company as a whole to achieve extraordinary results.
For example, take the 2017 Super Bowl champions: New England Patriots….
According to Bill Belichick, coach of the Patriots: “There is an old saying about the strength of the wolf is the pack, and I think there is a lot of truth to that. On a football team, it’s not the strength of the individual players, but it is the strength of the unit and how they all function together.”
The same is true for your company and every high performing organization that has a winning culture. You can dramatically increase company results by doing the following.
- Developing a list of non-negotiable’s that must be followed at all costs. You probably already follow one in your day-to-day life: The 10 Commandments. For business, I refer to this list of non-negotiables as The Company Way. These should be clearly understood and agreed upon by your team, so that in the heat of the season everyone follows the rules of the game.
- Develop specific accountability metrics for each position. I find it most effective when a company assigns one (or two at most) metrics per person to be achieved each day, week, month and quarter. This way each person knows what’s the one thing that is most important to achieve at any given time.
- Meet in teams on a daily and weekly basis to report on your metrics and be accountable to the team.
Jeffrey’s Breakthrough idea: Team accountability is more important than all others. As the team coach, your job is to foster a team culture…and ensure everyone stays focused on their personal accountabilities for the sake of the team win!
Take Action
- Before the season gets into high gear, develop your Company Way. Get everyone literally on the same page.
- Ensure each position understands its accountability metrics.
- Develop a rhythm of meetings (as a team, or teams) in order to build momentum, excitement and focus in your organization.
