Resource Management Best Practice 1 – Attract the Best with Accountability
In today’s competitive environment, it is no longer good enough to offer employees a good place to work. Rather, it is imperative a company creates a work environment where the best want to work. Only when such an environment exists will a company attract and retain the most knowledgeable, skilled, and accomplished employees; who in-turn will effectively execute its activities and make it a viable competitor in an increasingly aggressive marketplace.
Sign up for our Email NewsletterOrganizational Accountability – Evaluating Organizational Culture
While it might sound cliche, there exists a significant truth to the phrase, actions speak louder than words. As individuals, we all hold certain values, beliefs, and biases which guide our decisions and subsequently our actions. So strong and yet so unperceivable are these convictions that on a day-to-day basis our reactions and responses to hundreds of seemingly benign situations are defined by them. Therefore, an individual’s values, the beliefs, and biases can be interpreted and understood by observing the individual’s actions.
Organizational Accountability Best Practice 1 – Fact-Based Management
To say the accountable organization manages by fact may seem to suggest that a utopia exists, one in which all circumstances can be defined by ones and zeros. Within this utopian organization, executives and managers act to harvest the ones and discard the zeros.
While this is clearly not the case, managing by fact does imply that executives and managers leading accountable organizations strive to eliminate the subjectivity and raw opinion that is sometimes injected into the decision-making process; grounding decisions on a more tangible, objective foundation.
Organizational Accountability Best Practice 2 – Data Transparency
Is it still wrong if I don’t get caught? YES!
Organizations live and die by the decisions of executives and managers and the actions of employees. Therefore, individuals must be held accountable for their work that both helps and hinders goal achievement if the organization expects to thrive. This accountability can only happen, however, if the decisions/actions and associated results are visible. Data transparency helps create this visibility.
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Strategic Planning Best Practice 7 – Shared Accountability
Organizational silos act as barriers; hindering the performance of business units, work groups, and individuals as they strive to achieve the organization’s shared goals. Nowhere in the organization are silos more destructive than if they exist within the executive team. Here, silos prevent the free flow of information and resources needed to successfully execute cross-functional initiatives with the barriers to collaboration cascading downward though the entire organization. To help prevent these silos from forming, all strategic plan goals must be shared equally by all executives.
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