Jerry's Blog

Is the Accountability Cycle broken in your organization? It is in most organizations. Not at all levels, and not with every individual, but in every organization that I have worked with there has been a significant breakdown in their accountability cycle overall. Don't even get me started with the country in general and the resulting mess we have  going on in our financial institutions. I'll do my best to confine my tirade to corporate America and specifically to their ability to effectively execute their mission. What, you may ask, is the Accountability Cycle? The Accountability Cycle is a term we have coined for the process of: Setting Expectations; Accepting Responsibility for those expectations; Holding people accountable to fulfilling those expectations; and Facing the Consequences for success or failure. While this certainly is not rocket science, it is the one concept with which all organizations struggle.

 

The issue that I struggle with is which part of the cycle is the most broken. As a consultant charged with helping my clients improve their accountability cycle it is important to understand which part of the cycle is broken. So with each client I have to understand:

• Is the problem that management fails to set clear and specific expectations?
• Alternatively, is the problem that people refuse to accept responsibility for those expectations?
• On the other hand, is the problem that even with clear expectations, management fails to follow-up and hold people accountable for meeting expectations?
• Or, finally, is the problem that management fails to provide either positive or negative consequences for success or failure?

The more and more frequency, I am finding the answer to be yes to all of the above.  We are failing to do any of those things. We are failing to those things at work, in the home, in our schools, in our government, in our personal lives and in society as a whole. Where is it breaking down for you?

 

 

Setting SMART Goals and Clear Expectations are an essential part of the process of achieving higher levels of accountability with your peers and employees. Goals must be determined before expectations can be set and Expectations have to be set before someone can be held accountable for meeting them. Often we use the terms Goals and Expectations interchangeably. This happens most often when expectations are implied during the goal setting process. For example, when setting the goal to reduce errors in a process by 25% there is an implied expectation: you make 25% less mistakes. However, there are significant differences between goals and expectations. A Goal is something to strive for; a target to reach but it is not an obligation other than the obligation to try. An Expectation on the other hand
is an obligation considered reasonable, due and necessary. In performance management terms, the expectation is the minimum acceptable performance level and a goal is some point beyond the expectation that the manager and employee have agreed to target. Going forward from here, I will talk setting goals and expectation and the process for both are nearly the same as long as you keep in mind the differences: Targets vs. Obligations.

The goal and expectation setting process is not a complicated one. It can be difficult to pick the absolute right point to place as a goal or expectation, but in most cases it is less critical to be absolutely correct than it is to get a goal set and get commitments to striving to those goals. If you follow the guidelines for setting SMART goals, you should be fine. Many books, papers and websites give great detail to setting SMART goals but I'll run through the basics. First the acronym:

S - Specific

M - Measurable

A - Attainable

R - Relevant

T - Time Bound

 

Specific:

Both Goals and Expectations should be very clear, unambiguous and specific. There is no place for vagrancies when setting goals because a specific objective has a much greater chance of being accomplished. Specificity also facilitates measuring progress towards achievement. In the context of developing goals, Specific means that an observable and quantifiable action, behavior or result is described which is also linked to a measure of some type such as a rate, number, or percentage. Using the previous error rate goal as an example it is not enough to say our goal is to reduce errors. The goal should be quantified more specifically. To do so, you and the employee(s) need to answer and agree to six "W" questions:

Who: Who is involved?

What: What do we want to accomplish?

Where: Identify a location.

When: Establish a time frame.

Which: Identify requirements and constraints.

Why: Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.

 

Measurable:

The old adage is that if you don't measure it, you can't control it. What good is a goal that you cannot tell if any progress is being made on it? So to be effective you must create a tracking system to measure progress on reaching the goal that provides feedback in a timely basis. Let's use a real life example that nearly all companies want to improve upon – Customer Satisfaction. Everyone wants to improve on customer satisfaction. But how do you measure customer satisfaction in a way that is measurable in real time so that feedback can be given to the people that are trying to improve? Typical measurements are surveys that can take weeks to get back therefore delaying feedback for periods much too long to effect any real change. When facing this challenge, break the overall goal down into more manageable buckets. What are the controllable components of customer satisfaction that your employees directly control that can be measured? If you in a call center environment it could be things like:

• Time to call resolution


• Number of call escalations


• Number customer calls per issue

One note of caution goes back to a previous post: select the right measurement or you may get the wrong result.

 

Attainable:

Both Goals and Expectations should be achievable. Since expectations are obligatory, they have to be doable. That does not mean that they have to be easy but you must put people in a position to be successful or you are dooming them, and you, to failure. Goals, on the other, should stretch people more than expectations. They still should be achievable, even if it takes what for the individual is a herculean effort. Beyond this, the goal becomes ridiculous and it actually becomes a demotivator and a source of dissension in your organization.

 

Relevant:

Goals and expectations should be relevant to both the individual and the organization. A goal for which an employee has no influence upon is again worse than irrelevant, it is a distraction and a demotivator. Setting a goal or expectation to increase sales on a production line worker is not only irrelevant it is not attainable.

 

Time Bound:

Both goals and expectations need to have distinct starting and ending points. If the goal has a significant duration (this will vary by what the goal is) then a series of milestones should be defined. This increases the sense of urgency for accomplishing the objectives. Human nature being what it is, most people wait until the last moment to get things done. By setting a series of short interval milestones, then you can help the employee be successful by ensuring that they are taking incremental steps in achieving the overall goal or expectation.

 

When Goals are not needed:

There are also many times when goals are not needed in order to set expectations. Would you really go through a goal setting exercise in order to set the expectation that someone is to come to work on time? No. Nor should you. Some things in the workplace are not or nor should they be negotiable. Honesty, integrity, reliability, loyalty are all attributes that should be simple expectations in any organization that are framed in goals. These are pure obligations that come with employment or membership in the organization. A job description is another example of expectations that are not necessarily tied to goals. A job description states the minimum expectation of someone filling a certain role.

In the Performance Management field we tend to use the words Goals and Expectations somewhat interchangeably. We talk about setting Stretch Goals, SMART Goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Agreed to, Realistic, timely), Personal Goals, and on, and on. We tend to shy away from talking about setting expectations. This is due to the more negative perception around the word expectation than that of goals. No one likes to be told what to do. This is what happens when a manager sets an expectation. Therefore, we try to soften the blow by couching the expectation in terms of goals.

To me this is dishonest and we are really only deceiving ourselves. When you “tell” an employee what their goal is, do you really think that they believe that they had any input to their “goal”? It also makes us look weak and indecisive. This is not good for moral. By and large, people like strong, decisive leaders who have a vision. Leaders who set expectations and do so while sharing their vision get much more buy in and respect from their employees than do the ones who hide behind pseudo goals.

Think about these two expectation-setting scenarios:

Okay team, we have not been doing too well so I am going to set our goal for today at 25 sales calls each.

vs.

Okay team, our sales team is sitting idle because we have not generated enough leads for them to stay busy. If they’re not selling, we are not getting bonuses. So I am setting a minimum expectation of 25 calls each and I am challenging you to get 30 good quality calls made. Does anyone think that that is not achievable? …. Good. Don’t forget, if you need help getting past the gate keeper or closing on a meeting, get me involved to help. That’s what they pay me the big bucks for (smile).

My point here is that we need to separate goals from expectations and that both need to be set - What the requirements (expectations) are and what the stretch would be. This gives the employee not only a clear understanding of what has to happen but a goal to shoot for that is challenging yet attainable.

I am sure there are those with dissenting opinions on this and I would love to hear from you.

I ran across a great article today entitled Setting Expectations by Peggy L. McNamara on the WomenTodayMagazine.com site.

In the article Peggy makes 3 key points:

1. State your expectations on a regular basis - not once or twice a year.
2. Follow-up and hold people accountable.
3. Realize that holding people accountable is not dictatorship and that not everyone will agree. So sharing a bit of your vision and why it is important may be required from time to time.

She goes on to discuss how to confront certain issues but I don’t want to ruin that for you. Go read it in full. it’s worth your time.

Peggy is the author of “My Tender Soul - A Story of Survival”. She publishes a monthly e-zine, “Perpetual Life Management” and is the President/Minnesota Chapter/Nat’l Speakers Assoc. and Co-Owner/Huntington Learning Center/White Bear Lake, MN 651-438-2656 - Direct 651-438-2694 - Fax 888-269-7771 http://www.peggymcnamara.com. Peggy works with organizations that want to increase overall effectiveness and Generation X Women who want to develop to their fullest potential.

And just so you guys know, I found it by Googling the term “setting expectations” not because I was reading Women Today Magazine, not that there’s anything wrong with that….