Jerry's Blog

I was recently asked by Kellye Whitney, Managing Editor for Talent Management Magazine, if I thought that Accountability was a Performance Management issue. This was in response to an unabashedly unsolicited pitch for a series of articles in her wonderful magazine. While most of my pitches were dismissed the one about the loss of accountability being American businesses’ greatest threat did intrigue her.

My initial response to this question was “ARE YOU KIDDING ME??” How can accountability not be an essential part of any Performance Management program. Then I got to thinking, Kellye is obviously a very, very bright person to get to the position that she is in, so maybe I am missing the point. That got me to start looking at (and actually reading this time) all the literature and white papers produced by the Performance Management experts and software vendors. What I found astounded me. Nary a mention of the word accountability. Lots of lofty talk about Goals and Metrics and Job Satisfaction but none of the basic blocking and tackling stuff people on the front line have to do – setting expectations, removing barriers and holding folks accountable to getting their daily jobs done.

More on this later…

In the mean time I invite you to go look for yourself. Visit some of the big names such as Success Factors and Halogen Software. They have some really cool tools, but see how many times you can find the word accountability.