Do You Create an Environment of Autonomous Accountability?

“Autonomous account­abil­i­ty” is a term that came to me, in a recent CEO coach­ing ses­sion, when we were talk­ing about the real job of the CEO: to build a real­ly strong team and to make few­er deci­sions, over time. I talk about this in Make Your­self Use­less, Chap­ter 10, Your Oxy­gen Mask First.

That means giv­ing exec­u­tives an incred­i­ble amount of auton­o­my paired with an incred­i­ble amount of account­abil­i­ty. This is a match made in heav­en because high-per­form­ing exec­u­tives and CEOs want to work this way.

But many CEOs strug­gle to give more auton­o­my because they aren’t get­ting the results they want. Some­times, it’s because the right exec­u­tive isn’t in the right role and some­times, the expect­ed (the account­abil­i­ty) isn’t clear enough.

Gen­er­al­ly, we’ve found there’s only one way to know for sure — and that’s to have crys­tal clear account­abil­i­ty (in the eyes of the CEO and the exec­u­tive). Then you see, with that absolute clar­i­ty, if the exec­u­tive can deliv­er what is expected.

From that point, it’s easy to either give more auton­o­my, as the exec­u­tive either deliv­ers on their com­mit­ments or needs to improve their per­for­mance which either works or results in a change of their role.

The Right Peo­ple Want Peo­ple to Be Accountable

Most A‑Player exec­u­tives want autonomous account­abil­i­ty. So you have to set up the right sys­tems to allow that to hap­pen, with crys­tal clear Score­cards and goals to ensure every­one knows what they are respon­si­ble for deliv­er­ing, each month, quar­ter and year.

To be high­ly effec­tive, score­cards need to cov­er off three core engines of the business:

1. 1. 1. The Strat­e­gy Engine. Clar­i­ty about annu­al and quar­ter­ly goals which the exec­u­tive and the team need to accomplish.
      2. The Peo­ple Engine. Clear expec­ta­tions about the size, strength and per­for­mance of the peo­ple on the executive’s team. This is usu­al­ly a per­cent­age of A Play­ers and all key lead­ers hav­ing suc­ces­sion and devel­op­ment plans.
      3. The Cap­i­tal and Cash Engine. Account­abil­i­ty for two things:
         1. • Oper­a­tional KPI deliv­ery that show the teams and func­tions they over­see are deliv­er­ing to expec­ta­tion and help­ing their part of the busi­ness and
            • Spe­cif­ic lines of the income state­ment or bal­ance sheet, with spe­cif­ic tar­gets they need to achieve or ranges they need to stay with­in, for each.

In sum­ma­ry, in order to give peo­ple more auton­o­my, account­abil­i­ty often needs to be much clear­er. The CEO and exec­u­tive must be com­plete­ly aligned on what great looks like, and spe­cif­ic things that need to be delivered.

When deliv­ered, the CEO can relax, trust and give more auton­o­my to the exec­u­tive. And the exec­u­tive knows they are win­ning and meet­ing the expec­ta­tions of the CEO and the company.

The Chal­lenge

• What do you need to do to give each of your team mem­bers both more auton­o­my and more account­abil­i­ty so that they do their best work as inde­pen­dent­ly as possible?

Addi­tion­al podcasts

• How to Deal with an Under­per­form­ing Executive
• Sev­en Valu­able Ways to Devel­op Mid­dle Managers
• Lev­el 5 Leadership
• Are you Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Doing Oth­er People’s Jobs?

Addi­tion­al Blogs

• Team Build­ing: Devel­op­ing an ​“A” Team That Deliv­ers Bet­ter Results Than You, With­out You
• How Lead­ers Should Spend Their Time
• How to Make Peo­ple Decisions
• Do You Have the Right Ele­ments to Hold Your Team Accountable?

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

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