Monday 10 September 2007

#57 The Ingredients Of Accountability

In a recent article in the Performance Improvement journal, William Liccione presents a model that estimates a person's motivation to accomplish their assigned goals based on the relationship between factors like goal commitment, instrumentality to attain the goal, expectancy of receiving compensation, the value of the compensation and the fairness relative to compensation given to others.

This article inspired me to think about the relationship of motivation to accountability, a word that is bandied around a lot in workplaces today, without much practical discussion about exactly what it means nor exactly how to get it. In essence, it's the pointy end of responsibility - that when you are responsible for getting something done, you will need to show account (show a count?) of having gotten it done, or bear the consequences of not.

So if we want more accountability, what are the things we need to pay attention to?

Ingredient #1: Clear, clear, clear goals

What exactly is the person accountable for? How similar is the vision in your head to the vision in their head about what it looks like when their goals are attained? Get rid of ambiguity, inert language, all-encompassing broadness and keep the number of goals manageable (e.g. 3 to 7 priority goals per person).

Ingredient #2: Personal interest in pursuing those goals

Does the person care about the goals? What's in it for them? You know how hard it is to apply yourself to a task you just don't want to do - like vacuuming under the rug, cleaning out leaves from the roof gutters, giving high pressure sales presentations to disinterested audiences. Craft goals with the person, not for them. And help them explore the most ways they can contribute the best of themselves to their work.

Ingredient #3: Belief that the goals are attainable

Has the person got (or will they get) all the resources and time and knowledge and skill to pursue and attain their goals? Do they believe they will have these things? How much fear do they have about not attaining the goals? When you are choosing and designing goals, it helps to draft the action plan at the same time to both check that the goals are attainable and to pace the person through their objections and concerns about their ability to achieve them.

Ingredient #4: Belief that attaining the goal is worth their effort

Do they want to attain the goal enough that they are willing to pay the price to achieve it? Is the size of the reward for them large enough to compensate the extra mile they'll need to go to attain the goal? Discuss and agree the rewards up front, and contrast the having of those rewards against the time, effort, frustration, fear and whatever other price the person must pay to take on the goals.

Ingredient #5: Buy-in to objective measures that will track the goal

Are they confident that the measures chosen to monitor progress toward the goal - and evidence its attainment - are fair and useful measures? Do they believe that the measures are a true reflection of their progress and that, through their constructive goal-pursuing actions, they can affect the trends of these measures? Design the measures collaboratively at same time you design the goals.

I've written here about accountability of individual people, but I wonder how different the ingredients list would be for organisational accountability?

1 comment:

Stacey said...

Hello Stacey-

I read your blog post this morning about William Liccione's recent article in "Performance Improvement."

In case you are interested, the article can be purchased for download:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/user/accessdenied?ID=114121807&Act=2138&Code=4727&Page=/cgi-bin/fulltext/114121807/PDFSTART

I don't know if you would be interested in posting that information for your readers, but I thought I'd pass it along just in case.

All the best,
David

David Famiano
Editor, Journals and Periodicals
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint
989 Market Street, 5th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94103
Phone: 415.782.3158
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www.wiley.com
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www.wileyinterscience.com