MARKETING MATTERSCEO JOURNAL
Coming to Terms with Accountability M
DAN MARCUS, TDC CONSULTING INC., AMHERST, WISCONSIN
anaging people well is the single most difficult task in any organization. Bar none.
And one of the toughest concepts CEOs and other managers need to wrap their heads around is account- ability. Does anyone really know what accountability means or exactly how to hold an employee account- able? Anyone? For some managers—too many,
unfortunately—holding employees accountable means firing them for alleged poor performance. But that’s too harsh and, especially these days, too often short-sighted. Others equate accountability with responsibility, but that’s no good either—too nebulous and non-actionable. Still others use punishing performance ap- praisals and the withholding of pay increases, as a means of creating so-called account- ability. But this misses the mark by a wide margin too. In fact, managing this way is more indicative of poor man- agement than poor employee performance. After years of mulling
this conundrum over, I’ve come to the conclusion that accountability is a self- defeating illusion, and often little more than a fig leaf intended to cover up poor HR practices. I believe we should forget about “holding people account- able” and, instead, focus on developing and retaining them. In other words, the enlightened manager’s role is not and must not be to identify weaknesses and stack them up in negative performance appraisals to justify under-paying or firing so-called poor performers. Tis approach harms employees, as such rough justice is almost always too subjective and often the result of favoritism rather than genuinely poor performance. Managing in this way also harms organizations, because it works against nurturing what nearly every CEO professes to be his or her most valuable asset—people. No, what’s needed after all is not account- ability, but development and retention.
To be clear, I’m not condon-
ing real incompetence, repeated irresponsible behavior or lack of integrity. Employees exhibiting these characteristics are relatively rare and usually end up all but firing themselves before too long. In- stead, I am thinking about the vast majority of employees—those who are not among the favored few top performers; those who sometimes make mistakes and often rub us the wrong way. These employees need to be retained and developed, and rather than trying to figure out how to “hold them accountable,” CEOs and other managers should instead be focused on helping them become more effective.
Accountability is a self-defeating illusion.
Professional Development Plans embedded within performance ap- praisals are the best tool I’ve found for accomplishing the all-important development and retention function. Every six months, these documents should be jointly developed as an appraisal of employee (and manage- rial) effectiveness and as a blueprint for getting the employee the very next thing (or things) they need to become more effective—all the time with the focus and intent squarely on devel- opment and retention rather than so-called accountability. In some cases, what employees need to be successful is a transfer to another job within the company. In fact, in each of the turnarounds I have been part of, a surprisingly high per- centage of employees could not pos- sibly be successful or effective because they were in the wrong job. Also, and even more often, jobs were not
defined at all or, in those infrequent cases where job descriptions did exist, they were improperly or inadequately defined, leaving incumbents little choice but to fail. When I manage a turnaround, I always evaluate the orga- nization’s structure and whether each job is needed. Beyond that exercise, proper job descriptions are essential, as are evaluations of each incumbent’s attributes in light of those require- ments and discussions about whether all concerned believe each incumbent is in the right job. Job enrichment (i.e., expanding
responsibilities toward a higher level position) and job enlargement (i.e., expanding the scope and range of du- ties) are also ways in which effective- ness can be increased. On the one hand, these tools can shift the job’s requirements to be more in line with the incumbent’s strengths, thus improving the probability of success. On the other hand, enlargement and espe- cially enrichment are keys to improving job satisfaction, which is a prerequisite for
effectiveness (for retention too). But more often than not, the Pro-
fessional Development Plan is simply a learning plan, where a targeted pro- gram of education and/or training is laid out as a direct means of boosting knowledge, skills, effectiveness and re- tention. Te metalcasters I know who are farthest ahead in this area devote as much as 3% of revenues to employee learning. Investments in HR can pay great dividends in the form of improved employee effectiveness, satisfaction and retention. And as moves are made to boost the effectiveness of individual employees, overall organizational ef- fectiveness improves too. When this happens, HR becomes a powerful competitive weapon.
Keep the conversation going. Reach the author at
tdcconsulting@outlook.com to comment on this or any CEO Journal column or to suggest topics for future columns.
October 2015 MODERN CASTING | 47
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