Jerry's Blog

For more than two decades now, my colleagues and I have worked with companies to help them improve their execution at the frontline - i.e. on the floor, in the cubical, or wherever work is accomplished. We profess no particular expertise in any industry and yet, without fail, we have been able to achieve significant gains in productivity, efficiency, yields, safety, quality, or whatever metric our clients say is the most important to their bottom line.  20% - 30% gains are minimal. 40% to 50% are common and 50% to 60% improvements happen regularly.  We have worked in steel mills, engineering firms, chemical plants, utilities, call centers, high tech, low tech, highly automated, and very labor intensive. No matter what the industry, we get the results.  The thing is... we do not consider ourselves special. We do not have a magic wand. We do not have particularly spectacular resumes and we do not necessarily come from the best schools. What we do have though, is a basic understanding that a breakdown in the accountability cycle of the organization is the most significant barrier to achieving spectacular results in most organizations. By helping organizations repair this breakdown in accountability, we help them execute their processes more effectively which in turn leads to breakthrough performance. 

We also know that if we can do it for large organizations with thousands of employees, you can do it yourself within your own workgroup.  There is no reason why any competent manager at any level of the organization has to wait until told by someone else to tackle this opportunity. Anyone can do it at any level. Do get me wrong and think that it will be easy because it's not. This is "Culture Change 101" and few things could be harder.  However, by following the few simple steps outlined in the pages that follow you can fix the broken or missing links in your group's accountability cycle and achieve break through levels of performance improvement.

During one of the recent hurricanes in the Gulf Coast Region of the US, one of my clients had major damage to their facilities. So much so that they had to replace all the siding on a very large structure before they could resume operations. The contractors they brought in all told them that it would take 3 months to do the job. So our client decided to do the job internally. They brought in a couple of project managers from other parts of the organization and hired hundreds of construction workers. My team had been on site doing leadership development work with the supervision when the storm struck and put our project on hold. However, our client asked us to get involved during the 3^rd week of rebuilding efforts and it became apparent that they were not on track to meet their deadlines. He wanted us to help them get back on track and to understand why they were off track.  Within a few hours the why became astoundingly obvious - there was more work to be done than could be done in the time given. Yes there were the usual items of poor planning, lack of procedures, etc., etc., but given the conditions this was not unexpected or even unreasonable. No the real problem was that the when President of the organization said I want the plant back up and running by XX, can you do it? Everyone said "Yes Sir" even when they really had no idea how long it would take. What we found was a propensity to say whatever the boss wanted to hear and then start making excuses as to why they did not make the plan. This was not just one person, but everyone up and down the chain of command. To make it worse, everyone knew it. For example, when we pressed one supervisor to pick up the pace because he was falling behind the critical path, he would just smile and say that it was alright because no one was going to make their commitments because everyone had more work to do than possible in the time allotted.

We asked, what happens when you don't hit your commitments? Most replied along these lines: "There will be a lot of yelling and angry comments, but since everyone failed, what can be done? It'll blow over in a few days and we'll be back to normal." When discussed with the Senior leadership team at the facility, there was no surprise, no shock, no denial. I fact the #2 man simply said, "That's the way it has always been since it was built. It's the disease here at xxxxx"

If this was the only place I had seen this disease I would have agreed. Unfortunately, I have seen it in many places, in many forms. All which lead to a breakdown in the accountability cycle of the organization.

That's what I'm calling it anyway. This financial mess that we have found ourselves in as a country. It is a pure breakdown in the Accountability Cycle across all sectors of our country - Business, Government, Personal, and Social.  The expectations were set - I loan you money to buy a home, you pay me back. Never mind that the expectations were unrealistic - Home prices will continue to climb forever, you only have to pay interest until the balloon payment hits and then we will refinance if for you, you can't afford it but we will do it for you anyway. We signed up for it by the thousands and when the time came to pay the piper, we just walk away from it, refusing to take responsibility for our decisions. Sorry Mr. / Mrs. Banker, the house it not worth as much as the paper it's written on and apparently neither is my word. Good luck, see ya, have a nice day.

By no means am I laying everything at the feet of the homeowner who was trying to get the best house he could for his family. Speculators trying to make a quick buck, home builders recklessly plowing ahead even when the indicators and common sense said to stop, unscrupulous loan originators stretching facts and overlooking details, and mortgage holding companies that failed to do their due diligence when buying up those packages. All these groups have a hand in this breakdown. Don't blame the government for not warning us. Anyone with a little common sense could see it was an unsustainable bubble. When housing gets to be seven, eight and even ten times income there is no way that it can be sustained. But we kept going, heedlessly rushing into the euphoria of easy money. And now it's reality check time and no one wants to ante up. No one wants to face the consequences of our national failure. Fingers are pointing and politicians are all clamoring to be the first to say, "I told you so...You should have listened to me." Of course none really did, not loud enough to be heard anyway.

The solution that is being proffered by Washington is to let them all off the hook. We have to do this they say to avoid a 1930's style calamity. I wonder if that would not a good thing. Many good things came out of the great depression. Parks were built. Roads were built. Families pulled together and got through. Yes, many people went hungry a good bit, but we are a nation of obese people that could stand to take a few national pounds off.  A lot of good, well thought out laws were enacted many of which are still in effect today and need to be rethought because of the change in the times.   Out of the Great Depression, we came to be the World Power. Admired by our friends and feared by all.  A bail out could just put us deeper in national debt, despised as a nation of whiners.

Why don't we take a national stand and hold those responsible for this mess accountable and face the consequences together as a nation. Then let's set the expectation with our government to fix our to rebuild our financial system with the proper safeguards in place. This is a great opportunity to right many wrongs in our system. It's not up to Bush, or Obama, or McCain. It's up to us to take a stand and speak in a unified national voice. To set the expectation with our government. To take responsibility for our past actions. To hold those accountable for failure. And to face the consequences head on.

Is the Accountability Cycle broken in your organization? It is in most organizations. Not at all levels, and not with every individual, but in every organization that I have worked with there has been a significant breakdown in their accountability cycle overall. Don't even get me started with the country in general and the resulting mess we have  going on in our financial institutions. I'll do my best to confine my tirade to corporate America and specifically to their ability to effectively execute their mission. What, you may ask, is the Accountability Cycle? The Accountability Cycle is a term we have coined for the process of: Setting Expectations; Accepting Responsibility for those expectations; Holding people accountable to fulfilling those expectations; and Facing the Consequences for success or failure. While this certainly is not rocket science, it is the one concept with which all organizations struggle.

The issue that I struggle with is which part of the cycle is the most broken. As a consultant charged with helping my clients improve their accountability cycle it is important to understand which part of the cycle is broken. So with each client I have to understand:

• Is the problem that management fails to set clear and specific expectations?
• Alternatively, is the problem that people refuse to accept responsibility for those expectations?
• On the other hand, is the problem that even with clear expectations, management fails to follow-up and hold people accountable for meeting expectations?
• Or, finally, is the problem that management fails to provide either positive or negative consequences for success or failure?

The more and more frequency, I am finding the answer to be yes to all of the above.  We are failing to do any of those things. We are failing to those things at work, in the home, in our schools, in our government, in our personal lives and in society as a whole. Where is it breaking down for you?