Articles 

ACCOUNTABILITY
Part 1: The Customer
Part 2: Management
Part 3: Sales

PART 2     -      Management

Isn’t Management Always Accountable?

Degrees of accountability are up for question here. This is not the right place to take up a discussion of management styles, but as this affects other parts of ‘the customer touch point chain’ (sales, customer service, operations, etc.), it IS important to understand the impact of style. When I counsel clients, I often start with how they manage their clients. The reason for this is that so often the challenges and problems they describe to me are due to weak management of limits, boundaries and expectation-setting with existing accounts.

Management cannot always monitor every last second of interaction between internal touch points and a customer. But management can direct, train, set up a culture and empower!

Managing People and Processes - Accountability with Consequences

Ah, here’s the interesting part. I once worked for a small company of five employees that grew to almost 500 in 5 years. It was the best example of growth and process management I’ve still ever seen. Company leadership was practicing what I’ve since identified as The Basic Four Steps for Management Accountability. Lightning speed growth, coupled with continual technology changes were handled extremely well. They established a culture of accountability with consequences with follow through and consistency. Employees were empowered to support the process. I have also seen the opposite situation in the corporate environment with disastrous results. Lots of ‘standards’ get set up. Lots of lip service given to ‘requirements’. No follow up. No consistency. The results are a kind of ‘organized anarchy’. I was stunned by the lack of enforcement of standards. Who is to blame here for these problems? Management! The solution is not that daunting, but needs to include four elements, or steps … all four.

The Magic Four Steps for Management Accountability

1. Set up a culture of accountability – you and employees can take pride in this, rather than have it viewed with fear as a threat, with a noticeable inclination towards a standard of excellence.
2. Establish consequences – Don’t make the mistake of automatically associating consequences with punitive measures and negativity! Instead, taken in smaller doses, consequences can simply be that the next step in a process can’t happen without the required first step. We saw in Part One, Customer Accountability, that this should definitely apply to aspects of customers as they relate to your service delivery to them, but should also be practiced with internal operations as well as vendors.
3. Follow through – Accountability, process, required steps and consequences are all useless, without management follow through and enforcement for process! Think of the parent in the grocery store, who sets verbal standards with the child, but always gives in on the second or third try. Employees who see process and standards slipping through the cracks will lose all respect for them.
4. Consistency – You are the manager (owner, CEO, etc.) and step 3 and 4 are key to your accountability here. If you do not practice these two steps, you are failing in your own accountability. That’s where you lose credibility with yourself for complaining about customers, employees, back office support, sales and other internal breakdowns in process.

Management Reluctance and Delegating

Since we all know there are consequences for not being accountable, why are we often so afraid to say that to employees? Some of it is the fear of ‘bad press’, employees leaving, customers being offended, etc. I see this all the time with my clients, and it always surprises me.

Setting out procedures and standards is one thing, but it is a daunting task to dictate follow through. Managers, owners and executives need to set the vision, mission, goals, culture and rules. From a practical standpoint, deploying all that becomes much more of a delegated responsibility. Let your managers and supervisors take pride in the enforcement; just make sure they are doing it.

Empowering Employees

The positive spin is to empower your employees to help set up processes all through the organization with checkpoints and gatekeepers for ‘next step’ processes. Anything that slips through to the next level should be (cheerfully) rejected and passed back, until the required step is taken. This doesn’t have to be unpleasant bureaucracy, but rather a welcome orderliness for ease of process and service delivery, as opposed to anarchy and frustration for everyone.

The other piece of empowerment and accountability is to discourage empty complaining (oh let’s just say it…whining). As part of this new culture, encourage people to bring problems to the table. One requirement: Bring at least one (or two or three) suggestion(s) for a solution to that problem. You may not pick that solution, but it helps to openly discuss ways for improvement. It also gives an employee some ownership and skin in the game.

It Should Feel Good, Not Be a Downer

So leaders, no need to sigh in resignation over recurring problems. Become accountable to create enterprise wide openness for problem solving in your organization, set standards, empower people to run things right and come up with solutions they can own. Under this leadership most people will view consequences less as a threat, than a challenge to reach for excellence.

© Kristin Linder

Contact Information

theLINDERgroup

Radnor, PA

info@thelindergroup.com, www.thelindergroup.com

610.825.8939

Part 1: The Customer

Part 3: Sales

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