I was listening to a podcast this morning and there was this one phrase that came out that caught my ears. It said when you have clear objectives and data that reports on the outcomes that you’re looking to achieve, you have what we call no judgment accountability. 

I thought that’s amazing, because most employees and employers for that matter, resist accountability and will make excuses and try to justify things through what they did or didn’t do or actions and the like. But the reality is when you have clear objectives and clear ways to measure performance, it takes judgment out of it and makes it really clear and simple. 

So my questions to you are:

• Do you have clear objectives? 
• Are you clear on what you’re trying to achieve? 
• Are you clear on the milestones and measures that align to move you towards your objectives? And are you checking in periodically, either weekly, monthly, quarterly, to align whether you are on track? 
• Are you using data to be the accountability tool, versus opinion or conversation?

Now, this can be really simple or it can be really complex, the choice is yours but the reality is, what you need to do is allow the data to be your accountability tool, not the conversation, not the justification, not the commentary. 

Shift your focus to data-driven decisions, to data-driven accountability. Remove the judgment from it and what you’ll find is, you’ll move forward with immense speed. It’s an even playing field for all and it makes management so much easier. 

Now, a note of caution here. As you begin to implement this, if that’s not aligned with the culture that you’ve had in your organization, you will get resistance. 

It’s natural. 

Any kind of change that’s being implemented in an organization often gets resistance, let alone when we raise the standard of accountability, but you must persist. You need to explain to your team why you’re doing this and how it’s not only going to benefit the company but it’s going to benefit them, it’s going to make their lives easier because they’re going to understand where to put their energy in order to get to the objectives that you’re setting and agreeing on. 

I hope this has been helpful and I’d love any comments or thoughts around this, please feel free to get in touch.

Chat soon