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Three Strategies That Will Elevate Organizational
Accountability; Strategy #2 Assign
A White Paper from AchieveIt
Strategy #2:
Assign
Everything
When making assignments,
include firm due dates and
establish clear deliverables.
Make sure everyone knows the
specifics about what has to be
accomplished and when. Be
clear. Telling your marketing
director that you need to know
what the new advertising
campaign looks like next month
is vague. Telling that same
director that all of the creative
elements and the associated
media buy must be approved
by May 24 leaves no room for
individual interpretation. What’s
more, when the advertising
campaign also supports the
company’s strategic objective
of achieving a 10% increase in
sales by the end of the year,
accountability is appropriately
aligned with corporate strategy.
Unbelievably, many organizations
fail when it comes to making
strategic assignments. They
either do not assign anything
to anyone, assign the wrong
thing, or allow natural alibis
and excuses to be built into the
assignment process. There are
two types of assignments, and
both are critical to the company’s
success. First, there are strategic
objectives – those critical business
metrics the organization needs
to achieve. Second, there are
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the strategies and tactics that
must be implemented to achieve
the strategic objectives.
If you have any hope of creating
a culture of accountability, then
you first have to assign the things
you measure. To establish a
strategic objective of increasing
sales by 10% without having an
executive owner is like setting
sail for the coast of South Africa
without having a captain aboard.
You will certainly wind up
somewhere, but the likelihood of
landing in Cape Town is remote.
While it is common for
organizations to allow executives
to share these high-level business
metrics, it is better for a single
executive to own the objective,
and then cascade execution to
lower levels of management.
It is never a good idea to let
executives share a strategic
objective in total, as this only
leads to disputes and arguments
about who is responsible when
failure occurs. If the only option
available is assigning multiple
owners, then the company
is still better off carving the
objective into component parts.
3 Rules of the Road
Unfortunately, many companies
do not assign strategic objectives
to anyone. They mistakenly
believe that objectives are shared
across management, which means
that no one is accountable for
anything. However, for every
mistake made in assigning
strategic objectives, organizations
probably make five more mistakes
when assigning strategies and
tactics. Here are rules to live by
when assigning task-level items:
01.
Never Let People in Your
Organization Share the
Assignment of Strategies
and Tactics.
Doing so creates all sorts of
accountability shadows more
commonly referred to as
alibis and excuses. With every
additional person sharing an
assignment, the risk of execution
failure increases exponentially.
What’s more, a sure-fire way to
flirt with execution disaster is to
assign a critical strategy or tactic
to a team or committee. While
everyone on the team will believe
someone else is executing the
assignment, the reality is that no
one is executing it. Then, when
execution fails, the company
finds it difficult to hold individuals
accountable. The chair rightfully
claims that the members of the
team did not report to him, and
thus he had no real control over
their individual performance. The
team’s members also rightfully
claim that they were not the
chair of the team and, thus, were
not responsible for the team’s
performance. Ultimately, failure
belongs to the company’s poorly
designed execution management
system, which is at the root of
most organizational plan failures.
How then, do you handle
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Cascading Objectives
HOW TO DRIVE ACCOUNTABILITY TO MIDDLE MANAGERS
B
ig City Hospital has just completed its annual
strategic plan, and the focus of the plan
is outpatient growth. By growing highly
profitable outpatient elective surgeries, the hospital
will be able to overcome losses associated with
money-losing inpatient medical admissions. The
three service lines targeted for increases are
orthopedics, back and spine, and plastic surgery.
Nancy is Big City’s vice president for outpatient
services, so it is natural that the 12% overall increase
in outpatient elective surgeries is assigned to her.
To make sure Nancy’s full attention is given to
this strategic objective, Big City’s CEO ties half of
Nancy’s annual incentive bonus to this objective.
Currently, the hospital is performing 2,566
outpatient orthopedics, back and spine, and
plastic surgery procedures. As such, 12% growth
represents an additional 308 procedures, meaning
that the strategic plan is projecting 2,874 outpatient
surgical procedures in the coming year.
To elevate accountability further within middle
management, Nancy cascades her objective to the three
service line administrators responsible for orthopedics,
back and spine, and plastic surgery. Because orthopedics
accounts for 42% of the procedures, back and spine
for 35% of the procedures, and plastic surgery for
23% of the procedures, Nancy provides each of three
administrators a pro rata share of her objective.
Because each service line administrators’
indiviual growth targets are cascaded from the
organization’s overal target, Nacy and her three
direct reports share accountability for results.
Growth
Target Volume
1,078
129
1,207
Back and Spine
898
108
1,006
Plastic Surgery
590
71
661
2,566
308
2,874
Service Line
Orthopedics
TOTALS
Current Volume
One-year volume targets for elective outpatient procedures.
To create even tighter alignment, Nancy, like
her CEO, ties half of each administrator’s annual
performance bonus to his or her respective volume
target. Now, Nancy’s objective is intertwined with
organization-wide efforts that
involve multiple people? For
example, you have to complete
a critical employee-training
program prior for your national
industry certification. The
program involves 12 different
performance improvement
educators training front-line
staff in 58 different departments.
The natural tendency would
be to have the team of 12
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the objectives of her three administrators. Not only
has Nancy increased the likelihood that she will hit
her elective outpatient surgery target, but she also
elevated accountability within her own division.
trainers assigned the task
of training all employees
from all 58 departments.
Whom, then, do you hold
accountable when certification
is not granted because one
department was overlooked?
The better approach is to assign
each of the 12 educators specific
departments, and hold each
educator accountable to the
departments he or she is assigned.
02.
Put A Firm Due Date
on Every Assignment.
By “firm due date,” we mean an
actual calendar date. Not second
quarter, not June, but June 25.
Do not leave the due date open
for interpretation. Second quarter
might mean the first day of the
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second quarter to some and the
last day of the second quarter to
others. June might mean June 1
to some and June 30 to others.
If customer satisfaction scores
have to be at 82% by the end of
June, then the objective should be
stated exactly that way: Increase
customer satisfaction score
from 75% to 82% by June 30.
Lack of firm due dates invites
alibis and excuses, as it allows
your team to explain away
failures simply because the
due date was not clear.
03.
Be Clear and Concise
About Deliverables.
If the assignment is to increase
customer satisfaction scores,
include baseline and targets
in the assignment, as well as
the date the target needs to
be met: Increase customer
satisfaction from 75% to 82% by
December 31. If the assignment
is to complete a new marketing
plan, state exactly what that
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means: Create and receive
approval for an advertising
campaign aimed at first-time
homebuyers by March 21.
Being this deliberate and clear
prevents a critical strategy or
tactic from being misunderstood
when presented outside the
context of the full plan. Let’s
build off the above example:
•Objective: Increase number
of mortgages of first-time
homebuyers from 34 per
month to 45 per month by
December 31.
to provide contextual support.
To that end, when the marketing
manager receives an email
alerting her that she is to “create
and receive approval for an
advertising campaign by March
21,” she has no idea what the
deliverable is – an advertising
campaign for what? However,
an email letting her know that
she must “create and receive
approval for an advertising
campaign aimed at first-time
homebuyers by March 21”
provides her with the necessary
information she needs to execute
timely and with precision.
•Strategy: Develop and
implement a first-time
homebuyer regional marketing
campaign by May 30.
•Tactic: Create and receive
approval for an advertising
campaign by March 21.
When shown in the context of
the full plan, the above tactic
makes sense. However, these
kinds of assignments are often
delivered without the full plan
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