What you need to know about setting accountabilities
Setting accountabilities is no more complicated than writing down, then having a conversation with your people about what the organisation needs them to produce in the next period of time (usually a year).
An easier way to think of this is in terms of outcomes, results or even requirements, by asking the question ‘if whatever I describe on this piece of paper is 100% guaranteed to either appear or have been delivered at the end of the year, what would it be?’.
Most roles will have between 3-7 key results that they are asked to deliver each year, use this as a rule of thumb when determining how many.
The challenge in this process is that it requires imagination. That is, the future needs to be imagined, then described to your people so they can then use their capability to go about delivering it.
Describing Accountabilities or Results
As a way of describing it, you can use the following categories:
- Quantity or Deliverable – what do you actually want to see delivered, and if there’s any related volume amounts (sales dollars, square kilometres maintained, number of shows successfully run), put these down
- Quality – what is the sufficient quality standard that tells the person ‘you’ve done enough’
- Time – when or how often does the above need to be delivered, and note any milestones along the way
- Resources – what will the person be provided so they can deliver. Not just equipment and funding, but which other people have you set up to work with them? This can also include any limits and boundaries which aren’t to be crossed, remember, the more clear the boundaries, the more freedom people have to bounce around within them.
The conversation is more important than the document Read more…