Why do employees sometimes stay for a long time in companies without giving results? This is one of the great challenges that I have encountered in many organizations. Arduous work meetings, planning programs, and consultants are even hired to help them develop the best possible strategy. However, the results do not appear or not to the extent agreed. It seems that everything is perfect until planning, but at the time of application everything disappears as if by magic.
I have constantly heard complaints such as: "in the meetings everyone says they agree and are committed, but when it comes to the results no one responds", "we have been meeting after meeting for three months and we are still practically the same", "what is it that nobody Are you really committed to delivering results? ”.
Throughout my experience as a consultant I have learned that one of the central factors of this ineffectiveness is due to the lack of a culture of accountability. This concept of accountability has taken hold in many of the emerging nations during the last ten years, mainly in the political context. In order to develop more democratic systems, government institutions are required to expose to society their way of working and managing their finances. This is called accountability and is generally linked to the issue of transparency. When the concept is brought to the productive sector, the approach is usually the same. Obviously, accountability in this sense is demanded mainly of public companies. However, it is not along these lines that I see accountability as an effective process to generate results.
Culture of accountability
When accountability is not systematically established in a company, people often ease their pressure to deliver results. To make the employees of an organization really interested in obtaining the achievements that have been established it is necessary that they have a person to whom they must report on a regular basis. There are certain types of companies that are very used to this and are generally found in the financial sector or in those whose members receive payments or bonuses based on sales tables. However, there are many projects that are not directly related to sales and that require their developers to focus on completing them. It is in this type of project where the lack of a culture of accountability is most noticeable.
The principle behind the deficiency in results due to lack of accountability rests on the fact that the non-compliant do not receive consequences for not fulfilling their commitments in the agreed times. They have a meeting, they plan, they commit, they don't comply and nothing happens to them. In the absence of consequences, they become accustomed to breaching, justifying themselves, postponing or transferring the causes of their breach to another department or person. As nothing happens to harm them, they continue with their lack of results.
Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that the majority of Hispanics lack an accountability culture. We seem to interpret accountability as a symbol of lack of power, status, or mistrust, rather than perceive it as a support system to measure our progress, learn, and discipline ourselves. We believe that exposing the results or lack of them to someone else is a synonym for submission or dependency. Perhaps this is due to our sad stories of conquest and conquered, in which we associate reporting our progress with subordination, not with learning and effectiveness.
This type of elusive attitudes can also be found in training processes. Training is given to a good part of the staff, an external is hired, productive activities are stopped and people are even transferred from other cities. The contents of the training seem very good, make sense and offer great expectations for improvement. The assistants qualify with outstanding marks for said session but they return to their positions to continue working in the way they have been doing, without modifying their performance a bit despite what they received and commented on during the training. Why? Well, because there is no application program with accountability.
At Human Effectiveness we have learned that all development and training must have a monitoring system with accountability that we call a “learning partner”. In it, each participant acquires a follow-up colleague with whom they will meet regularly to render mutual accounts regarding the applications of what they have learned or the commitments made. In this way, each one has a person to whom they must expose their progress, results and experiences and make new commitments to continue working to achieve the established objectives.
Accountability generally goes hand in hand with brief feedback processes focused on capitalizing on what has been learned and achieving results, and on a registration system that allows clearly knowing how effective each employee has been in complying with your commitments.
A fundamental point of these implementation and monitoring processes is that consequences are established in case of non-compliance with the agreements. Our most effective suggestion has been to create personal compliance files. Thus, each compliance or non-compliance with agreements or results is recorded in the file of each collaborator and becomes an objective parameter for decision-making regarding promotions, salary increases and the granting of benefits. By having this system, the traditional annual or semi-annual performance meetings go down in history, since now there is a frequent, more objective and effective system to measure the performance of each member of the organization.
I have known managers and directors who avoid developing and working with their collaborators and therefore avoid the responsibility of promptly following up on results agreements. Some to avoid the above simply cut heads when they tire of having results and at the other extreme never apply consequences to the unfulfilled. Both cases have a negative impact on organizational culture and performance. The key to breaking this inertia is to establish accountability systems with those responsible for such monitoring, a simple and accurate record, as well as clear consequences for achievements and informalities.
For this system to truly work, it is essential that accountability processes are established as a tool for growth and learning and not exclusively for oversight. If we cannot implement them in this spirit, then what we will generate will be a culture of terror with the old and outdated scheme of the carrot or the whip.
Let us remember that human beings tend to comfort and when we perceive that in the event of non-compliance nothing happens to us, then in terms of productivity, it is most likely that nothing happens either.
