Foster Shared Accountability

Leaders can foster a culture of shared accountability by empowering their teams to take ownership of their work and work towards common goals. With shared responsibility, everyone is aligned towards the organisation’s priorities. This article explores practical steps to foster accountability in teams and workgroups.

Step 1: Focus Attention on what is most important. 

Identify and prioritise crucial objectives that align with the organisation’s mission and purpose. Exceptional execution starts with narrowing the focus and identifying what must be done. When teams juggle too many objectives, it is easy to lose sight of what is most important.

Leadership is about enabling others to execute toward a shared purpose. Of course, teams need to produce outcomes, but the leader’s job is to grow production capability. Leaders must enhance a team’s ability to perform, not just maintain the status quo. So, if the team is not achieving anything more than reacting to their daily churn, then leadership is irrelevant.

To build production capability, teams must answer the question:

“Over and above the whirlwind of our day-to-day job, what is the one goal that, if achieved, would make the biggest positive difference to the team’s performance and satisfaction?”

This focused goal should be a tangible measure that brings the team together and represents an aspect of the team’s work, the one area that offers the most significant opportunity to make a difference. Teams should craft a goal that represents their most critical gap and then create a clear finish line using the format ‘from x(baseline) to y(target) by when(due date).’

Step 2: Leverage Action with lead measures. Identify and take action for the highest leverage.

Eighty percent of your results will come from 20 percent of your activities. This practice is about placing a strategic bet on which behaviours that are within your control to influence are most likely to impact your focused goal.

Teams often focus on lag measures. These performance metrics are essential to track but difficult to influence as they point to something that has already happened.

On the other hand, lead measures are the most predictive of goal achievement. They are much easier to influence as they describe behaviours within the teams’ control. Finding the right lead measure can take some work, as they are not always obvious or easy to measure.

Step 3: Make it visual to engage and inspire. Create a visible and motivating scoreboard to track progress. 

People and teams play differently when they are keeping score. A visual reminder of the team’s goals and progress brings everyone together and creates a game of the work. 

A compelling scoreboard must be simple, show real-time progress on lead and lag measures, and let players see whether they are winning at a glance.

Step 4: Check-in and commit to taking things forward. Run a weekly routine to highlight successes, analyse failures, and course-correct as necessary.

In a meeting no longer than 30 minutes, gather the team and complete these three steps: 

1. Each team member reports if they met last week’s commitments.
2. The team discusses if the commitments moved the lead or lag measures on the scoreboard.
3. Each team member makes a new commitment for the upcoming week.

By following these straightforward steps, leaders can create a high-performance culture and increase strategic execution within their teams. Remember, the key to successful execution is understanding these disciplines and implementing them consistently and effectively.

To find out more about how to upskill your leaders in fostering shared accountability, reach out to us via info@soji.com.au.