Is Accountability Missing in Your Strategic Planning and Management Plan?
Posted by on January 18, 2010Common wisdom tells us that achieving strategic planning and management goals requires an actionable plan that considers the people required to bring the plan to fruition. Sounds simple enough – yet, in practice both components (plan and people) have intricacies and uncertainties that must be carefully managed. People, in particular, must have accountability to accomplish the individual tasks that are required to achieve the overarching organizational goals.
Let’s look at five important concepts related to accountability:
1. Staff Accountability is Critical to Strategic Planning and Management Success
A plan is worthless without the staff accountability to bring that plan to life. Unfortunately, rather than punish employees that are not performing, managers often move these under-performing assets to other work assignments, thus taking valuable resources (time and money) from the organization. In order to accomplish strategic planning and management goals, individuals must be held accountable for executing on their specific tasks and some, including the CEO, may be accountable for reinforcement of the tasks.
2. Empowerment is More Important than Expertise
Staff incentive, understanding, and value to the execution of the plan are far more important than specific expertise. Employees that understand what is being done, why, when, and how they can contribute they become empowered team players. Alternatively, staff members that hoard information and create chiefdoms (“information managers”) do nothing to advance the organization – and instead care more about the advancement of their own personal careers.
3. True Accountability Requires Positive and Negative Consequences
Individual accountability cannot exist without consequences -- both positive and negative. Teams and individuals must understand both the organization’s desired outcomes and their specific responsibilities in achieving those outcomes. Furthermore, their role and impact in meeting organizational objectives should be rewarded, while any behavior that impedes the achievement of organization goals should be appropriately punished.
4. Accountability Requires Timeframes
For accountability to exist, the team and all who are affected by the plan must understand what is to be accomplished and within what timeframe. After all, it is impossible to hold people accountable for accomplishing a key outcome if there no basis to measure. Similarly, an objective that is not bound by time can never be considered to be complete or have insufficient progress because the team working on it has unlimited time in which to complete it.
5. The Accountability Test is Simple: Did the organization reach its goals?
In the end, what’s the best way to tell if your organization has appropriate accountability? A simple test, really: When staff, both individually and as a team, accomplish the organization’s key outcomes you likely have good accountability in place. Without it, success is minimal at best.
For permission to use or reprint any portions of this copyrighted article, contact Method Frameworks at articles@methodframeworks.com.
About the Author:
Joe Evans is the President and CEO of Method Frameworks. Joe is a published author, frequent speaker and recognized expert in corporate strategic planning. To contact Method Frameworks about scheduling Mr. Evans about an upcoming speaking engagement, visit www.methodframeworks.com/business-speaker or email requests to media_relations@methodframeworks.com.
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