Organizational accountability is built on the premise that individuals are equitably rewarded based on their contribution to the accomplishment of the organization’s goals consistent with its ethical values. Performance, therefore, becomes more than just “making the numbers.” Performance in the accountable organization is an assessment of an individual’s achievement against mission-based performance measures while living up to the organization’s values.

Performance = Results + Behaviors

Breaking down the performance equation reveals the importance of both results and behaviors to the assessment of an individual’s performance.

Results: measure of an individual’s contribution to the overall achievement of organization goals and therefore its success
Behaviors: assessment of how an individual performs work against defined values, policies, standards, and procedures; contributing to the organization’s ongoing value generation ability, risk mitigation, and external goodwill valuation

From these definitions, we see that results reflect what an individual contributed whereas behaviors represent how the contribution was made. Results enable valuation of past performance; behaviors of present performance and its influence on future outcomes. Combining results and behaviors, therefore, provides a picture of an individual’s total value contribution, past, present, and future.

Nathan A. Ives is a Strategy & Operations Manager at Deloitte Consulting LLP, a StrategyDriven contributor, and co-Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over fifteen years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at numerous Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

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