I recently gave a talk on the importance of technology in business.  In the run-up to the talk, I took the opportunity to interact with the staff to get a feel for the way the organisation works and how effective the organisation was at execution.  This interaction shaped the theme and the content of my talk with the executive.

“The buck stops here, with this executive committee, not with the person in the frontline, not with the call-centre agents, not with the support staff, but here.  The accountability for the success of this organisation sits squarely with the executive committee and each one of you has a role to play in making this organisation a success!”

This opening salvo summarised the issue that prevented the organisation from leveraging the wealth of knowledge and expertise in the organisation and thus disabling it. The result was extremely poor customer service, ineffective risk and compliance, dysfunctional technology department, programmes that were unsustainable and huge losses in revenue and productivity.   It was clear that the executive had failed their customers, their employees, their shareholders and most of all,  they had failed themselves.

Accountability is an issue that many organisations struggle with and, in most cases, only partially implement. What we see in most organisations, executives are quick to accept the credit for a job well done but, will initiate a witch hunt to “punish the guilty” when things go wrong.

In his book, Leadership, The Care and Growth Model,  Etsko Schuitema, explores the issue of accountability and proposes that one can only be held accountable if, and only if, they have the means and abilities to perform their function.  The means refers to the tools and the abilities refer to the competence of the employee.  In the case of failure, one has first to determine whether or not the employee had both the means, tools, and abilities, competency, to carry out the function, if not the accountability for the successful completion of the task moves up the hierarchy.  The argument is simple; the superior is accountable to ensure that the employee has both the means and abilities to perform the required function and to a lesser degree, contribute to the performance of the task.

The beauty of this model is that it explains the real purpose of the hierarchy within the organisation explains very clearly the conditions under which we can hold an employee accountable.  It also explains that ultimately the executive is accountable to ensure that to whomever they have delegated accountability to, that they have the means and ability to be held accountable.  The model also explores ways in which we can use work reviews to asses and measure output and use it as a tool to identify deficiencies in both means and abilities.

Work reviews also allow us to determine whether or not the employee has “gone the extra mile” and reward the employee appropriately.  What if the task was unsuccessful even though the incumbent had both the means and abilities to execute the task?  The model then proposes that we determine why was the task unsuccessful, was it due to neglect, then we have to chastise the employee, but if the intent was malevolent, then we have to dismiss the employee.

This model has so much appeal and it is one that I “unofficially” use to grow the people that I have the privilege of working with.  It has served me well and I have had the honour of seeing people grow beyond their capability and in many instances, they have exceeded mine. This is the foundation of Care and Growth.