Is Accountability a Performance Management Issue – part 2

In the first post on this issue I ended with the fact that very few of the experts writing about Performance Management or the vendors hawking consulting advice or software talk about accountability in the open. They talk about Goals, and other non-threatening aspects of Performance Management. This also applies to the words associated with accountability – expectations, responsibility, consequences, and confrontation. I think this is a mistake and a missed opportunity for both groups.

For the experts, nothing could be more important for improving organizational performance than addressing the lack of accountability, the unwillingness to set clear expectations, the failure to clearly communicate the consequences of failure (to: the organization, the department, and the individual) , and the importance of accepting responsibility for ones own actions.

For vendors selling services and solutions: having a platform that enables managers to be more effective at doing all those things is a terrific selling point. Most senior managers are not dumb people so don’t sugar coat your product when selling to that level. Let them know that you understand that holding people accountable is hard stuff. Let them know that your products make it easier for their managers to hold people accountable AND that it makes it harder for those managers to avoid holding people accountable.

The more we use these words, the less afraid we become of them.