Maybe I’m being hard-nosed or lacking in sensitivity, but I’m amazed at how much lack of accountability we accept in performance of people’s jobs. Too often, it seems that we treat many of our accountabilities as optional.
The examples are rampant. Things like, using the sales process, maintaining high quality/healthy pipelines, leveraging the tools and technologies we put in place, coaching/developing our people, and on and on.
We put the things in place that enable us to achieve our goals. Yet too often, perhaps through lack of attention, leveraging them seems to be optional. We provide tools to help improve efficiency, yet people aren’t using them. We provide training to help improve performance, but people aren’t using it. We provide programs, that may drive certain initiatives, but people don’t implement them. As managers, we know our job is to maximize the performance of each person on the team, but we don’t to the work of coaching and developing that performance.
Recently, I had a conversation with an executive. Initially, this executive thought “We need pipeline management training……” But as we drilled into the issue, we discovered they had very rich pipeline metrics and reporting. They had weekly meetings on the pipeline. They didn’t really need pipeline management training, they needed to be held accountable for maintaining high quality/healthy pipelines. No amount of training would help them, unless they were accountable for the quality and health of their pipelines.
With another group, they were shifting roles and responsibilities of the field sales people. Rather than managing all the accounts in their territories (which could have been hundreds), they were now focused on about 20-30 strategic accounts in each of their territories. The sellers were provided training and tools to help them in focusing on the strategic accounts. Their quotas were adjusted to reflect the potential and expectation from those accounts, rather than for the whole territory. But many refused to change. “I don’t have the time to do an account plan…., I’m too busy managing my territory…..,” and other excuses arose. People weren’t changing their behaviors, their jobs had changed significantly, but weren’t doing their jobs.
We see this in many, sometimes small ways. We provide tools that people are supposed to use, but they don’t. We provide programs and training people are supposed to use, but don’t. We provide processes that people don’t use. We define our ICP, but let people do what they want in filling the pipeline.
And this is not just a problem at the individual contributor level, this is a problem at many management levels. We are accountable for coaching our people, yet we fail to do this. We are accountable for making sure our people use the tools, but we don’t use them ourselves. We say people should use the process, yet abandon it to drive revenue faster.
We talk about accountability, yet people aren’t answerable.
I’m sorry, but these behaviors and the continued acceptance (implicit or explicit) have to be unacceptable!
I don’t mean this in a mindless, “Do what I say,” mode, but rather, when we consciously put things in place that are critical in getting our jobs done, we cannot treat them as optional.
With my teams, I’ve always created “conditions of employment.” And these are as tough as they sound. By accepting a role in any of the organizations I’ve led, there have been conditions of employment. In accepting the role, people were consciously committing to those items. If people consistently or purposefully failed to do these things, they were choosing not to do their jobs, consequently were choosing not to keep their jobs.
Now you might be surprised, meeting quota or budget was never one of these conditions of employment. Yet, people were terminated if they consistently failed to achieve those. But when you drilled down, they weren’t doing the things that would lead to them to achieving the numbers.
For example, leveraging tools and technology was a critical accountability. Leveraging the sales process appropriately, using the sales methodologies, going through training programs. Showing up for work on time and putting in the time–not the hours, but whatever it took to achieve their goals. Working, collaboratively, with others.
Each person is accountable for their behaviors, doing the work, supporting each other. These are not optional, but they are critical to individual and team success.
We have to do the work.
