The world’s most admired companies excelled at driving accountability right down through their organizations, while the rest of the sample were significantly less good at holding people accountable. The other companies tended to hold people accountable for metrics, instead of the strategy, and did not follow through, letting executives ‘off the hook’ (see Figure 1). The most admired companies reinforced accountabilities by monitoring and managing performance. The best organizations reinforce accountabilities through a very strong focus on managing poor performance, through the use of forced distributions and through standardized global processes.
Holding people accountable is also likely to be more challenging in the complex, team-based and matrix structures that characterize many organizations. The most admired companies were managing these interfaces more effectively than others, ensuring there were no gaps in accountabilities across roles or processes and managing interdependencies team-working and collaboration (see Figure 2).
Implications for practice
This key success factor leads to implications for practice in two areas: first being clear about individual accountabilities for a particular role (and managing interfaces where there are overlaps between jobs), and second, managing performance to hold people to account for delivery accountabilities.
The first requires a systematic approach to understanding jobs and roles — ‘what is done to what/whom and with what end result?’, or put another way, ‘what are the main areas in which this job must get results in order to achieve its purpose?’ This concept of accountability, the starting point for ‘job evaluation’, establishes how the role adds value and is a necessary prerequisite for holding people accountable. The best organizations know what they want to hold different people accountable for. This will link to Key Success Factor 1 — the best organizations hold people accountable for those things they do which contribute to strategy execution and delivery. It is unlikely, however, that individuals, particularly managers, will have primary responsibility for delivery of all objectives; for some objectives this will require shared responsibility with others.
The most admired organizations — such as Proctor & Gamble, Asda/Walmart — effectively define inter-accountability, with matrices delineating accountabilities as ‘prime’, ‘shared’ and ‘contributory’. Some organizations — such as Tesco — have for many years adopted the ‘RACI principle’ to define work, ascribing who is Responsible (who will do the work), who is Accountable (‘where the buck stops’), who needs to be Consulted, and who needs to be Informed.
Defining accountabilities is only part, however, of holding people accountable; it also relies on the capability of managers to manage performance over time. People need to be monitored against set accountabilities, given feedback and coaching to help them realize these responsibilities and be evaluated on the extent of their achievement.
Thus processes need to be put in place to ensure that people are not ‘let off the hook’, that performance against key accountabilities is measured, and that if it falls short there is a consequence to underperformance.
Cross organizational working culture
All the companies surveyed expressed a desire to achieve a similar, ‘ideal culture’ that fostered:
* team working
* customer focus
* taking initiative
* treating all employees fairly
However, the Fortune research found that the most admired companies were three times closer to achieving this target than the other companies. The best companies, it appears, have a closer match between the espoused (desired) culture and the culture in practice (current). While all companies aspired to the qualities listed above, the peer companies tended to have cultures that reinforced and rewarded achieving budget objective and supporting management structures and decisions.
MANAGING & MEASURING EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Houldsworth & Dilum Jirasinghe
PUBLISHER: Kogan Page
PRICE: Rs 295
ISBN: 9780749451141.
Excerpted with permission from the publisher. Copyright Kogan Page India. All rights reserved.
