Jerry's Blog

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.

The mission of this blog is to get more people talking about accountability in the workplace and in our organizations in general. I am happy to report success, even if it is only one more person. Over the last few days Halogen Software’s Human Resources Adviser and official blogger - Dave has published a series of articles about accountability (even better, he mentioned me - Thanks Dave). To read the articles in full click here: article 1, article 2, article 3. Now of course the articles are advertisements for his company’s software but that is okay with me if there is no more than one salient point in the message. Dave makes several. My favorite is the following excerpt:

Where the real accountability comes in is around keeping everyone responsible for their actions on a day-to-day basis and creating a culture where everyone understands what they are to achieve, and is measured against that.

Ahhh, music to my ears. He nailed it on the head. This is exactly what performance management is about. Now the trick is achieving said culture. Sounds like a great blog topic to me.

Next time - Achieving a Culture of Accountability (part 1 of ??)

A few weeks ago I was having a discussion with several clients about accountability, expectations and follow-up. The clients were Rick, the site manager, and his top two department managers, Lucy and Ethel (all fictitious names of course). Both Lucy and Ethel were lamenting on the fact that even though they told people what they wanted done, much of it never seemed to get done without constant follow-up and reminders. They both felt that they should not have to follow-up as often. Ethel made the comment, “When I was a supervisor no one had to hound me to get these things done! Why should I have to constantly stay on them?” At this point Rick interjected a very profound statement:

“Why do you think I promoted you and not them?”

In the first post on this issue I ended with the fact that very few of the experts writing about Performance Management or the vendors hawking consulting advice or software talk about accountability in the open. They talk about Goals, and other non-threatening aspects of Performance Management. This also applies to the words associated with accountability - expectations, responsibility, consequences, and confrontation. I think this is a mistake and a missed opportunity for both groups.

For the experts, nothing could be more important for improving organizational performance than addressing the lack of accountability, the unwillingness to set clear expectations, the failure to clearly communicate the consequences of failure (to: the organization, the department, and the individual) , and the importance of accepting responsibility for ones own actions.

For vendors selling services and solutions: having a platform that enables managers to be more effective at doing all those things is a terrific selling point. Most senior managers are not dumb people so don’t sugar coat your product when selling to that level. Let them know that you understand that holding people accountable is hard stuff. Let them know that your products make it easier for their managers to hold people accountable AND that it makes it harder for those managers to avoid holding people accountable.

The more we use these words, the less afraid we become of them.

I was recently asked by Kellye Whitney, Managing Editor for Talent Management Magazine, if I thought that Accountability was a Performance Management issue. This was in response to an unabashedly unsolicited pitch for a series of articles in her wonderful magazine. While most of my pitches were dismissed the one about the loss of accountability being American businesses’ greatest threat did intrigue her.

My initial response to this question was “ARE YOU KIDDING ME??” How can accountability not be an essential part of any Performance Management program. Then I got to thinking, Kellye is obviously a very, very bright person to get to the position that she is in, so maybe I am missing the point. That got me to start looking at (and actually reading this time) all the literature and white papers produced by the Performance Management experts and software vendors. What I found astounded me. Nary a mention of the word accountability. Lots of lofty talk about Goals and Metrics and Job Satisfaction but none of the basic blocking and tackling stuff people on the front line have to do – setting expectations, removing barriers and holding folks accountable to getting their daily jobs done.

More on this later…

In the mean time I invite you to go look for yourself. Visit some of the big names such as Success Factors and Halogen Software. They have some really cool tools, but see how many times you can find the word accountability.