Build the Right Team and Set Clear Expectations — Foundations for Building Accountability
Accountability is hard. Creating it, living by it, and leading it—all are tough tasks. This is another one where it can be said, ‘if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.’ In the last article, I introduced the ten steps that go into building a culture of accountability. It would be difficult to say that any one of the steps is the most or even more important than others; each of them are critical when they need to be. Every step is situational. However, a strong argument can be made that the first several steps are foundational to the success of creating an environment where the team owns their actions and outcomes.
Step 1 — ESTABLISH Right People, Right Role, Right Time
Having a team made up of the right players, who clearly understand their role and are qualified to perform in that role, is critical to the business. They must be well positioned for the company and customer’s needs as well as their personal success. Being staffed and stable is necessary for supporting any well-thought-out business structure.
In today’s retail world, having the right people in the right place at the right time is paramount to the success of any business. This is becoming an even more challenging prospect. This concept has likely been around since the beginning of time, with someone saying, ‘I just need the right person for the job.’ It was popularized in the early two thousands by Jim Collins in the book, ‘Good to Great.’ Collins spent an enormous amount of time speaking to the importance of having the right people on the bus.
It is true, of course, that without the right people in the right roles, it can be impossible to reach your full potential. Saying that it is not always easy is likely the understatement of the century. Finding great people who fit the positions you are looking for and then maintaining them in that roles is a challenge every leader faces. It is also one that sometimes can feel so overwhelming that we sometimes walk away from it. Then we settle for ‘close enough’ and try harder to make it work with a person that may not have been the best match for the role. This can place additional stress on everyone else. And this undermines accountability from the start. It can feel like a catch-22 situation. It is hard to hire the right person, but without that dedication to this first step, it places all the others at risk.
Right Role
Finding the right person can be even more challenging if the role you are looking to fill is not clearly defined. Each role needs to fit into the situation you are solving for. Right role and right time go together. Right time is not just about scheduling. Often in retail, we use this same wording to define how an effective schedule need to be written. Invariably, we drag in the concept of ’scheduling for the needs of the business.’ While true and important, this concept, especially for accountability, goes beyond that.
Right time is as much about the situation and environment you find your business in right now. Working in concert with the right role, the timing of the position is linked to your success as well. Imagine how a role around supporting omni-channel looked three or four years ago. Compare that to what would be necessary today. We can generalize and state, ‘we need someone for OmniChannel orders.’ Today, we would need to redefine the role and what that incapsulates, how many positions you need, and the support that goes into that. The role changed and the importance of it relative to timing has now also changed. Retailers at all levels now have completely dedicated teams to supporting, managing, and processing OmniChannel orders. What was once an occasional order from the website is now a driving force for doing business. Plus, now customers can come into the store, pickup at the curbside, or have it delivered to their house directly from the store. Time is more than just a schedule.
Always recruiting
Having the right people is step one, but it is a step that never ends. Since the environment we work and live in is always changing, the need to be searching for who might be next is continual. This will ensure that when new roles are required, you already have some options available. Having open positions erodes accountability. Why? It places added burden on others. It begins to blur the lines between roles. If each role is clearly defined and has a purpose, then when a position sits open for an extended period of time, those responsibilities either go unfinished or others pick them up. That adds more to their plate and can require prioritization. If that is not handled well, it can feel like too much is added to any one person’s plate, or quality decreases. It becomes a cycle that breaks down the trust that comes from a culture of accountability.
Step 2 — SET clear expectations
When you or your employees are unsure of their role and what is expected, performance will suffer. It is incumbent upon the leader to set clear expectations.
To help clarify expectations, ask yourself a few questions: Do I have a clear understanding of what is expected of me? What do I expect of myself? Do the people around me understand my role? Do they understand the relationship between my role and theirs? Do they have a clear understanding of their role and expectations?
It would be hard to argue with how important clear expectations are to accountability. If people are unsure of what is expected of them, how are they supposed to perform in that role? Expectations extend beyond just individual roles. Everyone needs to have a good understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the other team members. They may not know all the details, but they must have a vision of how everyone interacts together.
I am not one to use sports analogies a lot, but since most people have a good idea of the team concept in any sport, they lend themselves to illustrations. In this case, think of a football team. Each position has a specific role they play on the team while on the field. Everyone could know their role, but would it be as effective if they didn’t understand how it related to the other players? Someone blocking on the offensive line of the team has specific people they are supposed to block. They know that their role is to protect the quarterback when the play is a pass. When the play is a run, they know that they need to clear lanes for the running back to run through.
This example can provide multiple illustrations of how clear expectations relates to accountability. If you block the wrong person, that means someone else is going to have an opportunity to make a tackle that they shouldn’t have. Without taking the analogy too far, it is clear that success will not result from that play. There was a breakdown in expectations (blocked the wrong person), and depending on the situation could have been a miss from step one. Perhaps that player was new to the situation and was not properly trained to identify the changed play or defensive shift. As a result, there was a breakdown.
The extreme side of these first two steps working together in our analogy would be asking the kicker to play on the defensive line. They would be completely unqualified for that role. They would be miserable. The team would not find success. And likely, many people would be pointing fingers at others. Setting expectations also has to be reasonable. You can explain the expectations to that kicker all day, but if they cannot perform the role (right person, right role, right time), success will not result.
In the next article, we will explore what happens with unmet expectations. The outcomes have an impact on the team as well as each individual. Ensuring those are clearly understood, as much as the expectations, will close the loop on expectation setting.
These first two steps are truly the foundation for the creation of a culture that is driven by accountability. Without the right people doing the role that they are best suited for, in the right situation, it will place extra stress on everyone. Add in a fuzzy understanding of what is expected and there is no path to accountability. Spend the extra time you need to continual work on the team makeup and ensure that everyone knows what is needed from them in that role.
How will you use these first two steps to set the foundation for your culture of accountability?
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