Accountability & Authority

In an ideal world, everyone would have clear responsibility, with the right level authority granted so that they could then be held accountable for their performance.

A great company keeps pursuing this ideal even though roles and responsibilities change. Why? Because they know that they will not make their goals if they don’t hold people accountable to achieving them.

And nothing alienates an employee faster than holding him or her accountable when clear and consistent authority was never given that was essential to achieve accountability.

So if you have yet to grant clear authority for what your employees can and can’t do, in what situations and with money at stake, then you will have a line up of people at your door who expect you to make the decision. Then all problems are your problems. This is not a way to grow a business. It is a way to fuel frustration, cause stress levels to spike and create a culture of poor self-motivation.

To have responsibility and no authority is a hopeless experience.

To have all the authority and no responsibility is an abuse of power.

To expect accountability by taking away authority when you feel like it is why companies are very hard to manage and how you lose great people.

If this situation is happening in your organization, this is how we help.

We work with your teams to develop clear roles for what they actually do, mapping out responsibilities.

Then we work with you and the team to determine what level of authority is needed.

Then we work with you and your leaders on how and when to grant that authority and how to avoid taking it back with comments, behaviour, signalling, meeting actions and body language that get you into trouble.

Then we present it to the team as a set of agreements that you all sign off on. Now you’ve taken the breaks off a high performance team.

Now you are ready for performance evaluation and holding your team accountable for your growth goals.

Don’t have growth goals in place? Read the Solutions section on Strategic Planning.

Departments squabbling that they don’t receive the information they need when they need it? Read about how how we address Workflow issues in the Solutions Section.

Wonder about whether improving how you grant authority will improve your culture and your stress levels? Read the articles below: