There’s one area that we all participate in where accountability raises its head, and that is meetings.
In a typical meeting, people share several ideas, goals and plans, but we’re all too familiar with what often happens next: nothing.
Days, even weeks go by, and no one brings their concepts to life. Virtually no progress is made toward achieving the meeting’s goals. Everyone gets frustrated, you, the project leader, most of all, and people begin to point fingers. When you follow up to ask everyone for an update, you start to hear an array of responses that noticeably fit into the 5 stages of accountability (denial, blame, excuses, anxiety, accountability). You hear statements of denial like, “Oh, I didn’t know this was a high priority.” And blame like, “I can’t do my analysis until I have the numbers from accounting; have you talked to them?” And excuses like, “I couldn’t get it done because IT was fixing my computer last week.” And anxiety like, “I thought this would be easy to finish, but turns out there’s a lot more to it than I thought. If you still need this, I’ll need a few more days to figure it out.”
If any of this sounds familiar to you, your organization could suffer from a problem with accountability.
There are several ways to improve the accountability of your organization, and one of the quickest and easiest comes in the form of a simple two-part question that you should ask at the end of every meeting:
“What are you personally going to achieve and by when?”
This question seems simple enough, and you’re probably already familiar with its use in the workplace. But the key to this question comes not only from its wording, but also from when and where you ask it. (Everyone thinks they’re already asking this question, but unless it’s done just right, it won’t be effective).
To dramatically improve this question’s effectiveness, follow these tips:
- Ask the question at the end of every meeting to summarize the actions required to move forward.
- Make sure every attendee in the meeting answers the question in front of the group. It doesn’t work if all the other group members don’t hear the answers.
- Make sure a specific date is given to the “by when?” part of your question (“Next week” and “next month” are unacceptable.)
- As each person answers their question, make note of their goals and deadlines. Within an hour after the meeting ends, send an email to the group with a summary of everyone’s goals and deadlines. (For maximum effect, draw a three column grid on a white board. Along the vertical axis, write everyone’s names. Along the horizontal axis, write “Goals” and “Deadlines.” As people answer their questions, add their answers to the grid while everyone watches.)
- Finally, after everyone has answered their questions, and you’ve taken note of each of their responses, end the meeting by saying, “Ok, everyone. I’ll be sending around the summary of what everyone has agreed to here (pointing at the white board). If anything comes up between now and your deadline that might push back the completion of your task, be certain to let me know, and I will update the entire group as needed.”
Here’s why each of these tips is important:
First, research shows that when people make promises not just to one person (even if that person is their boss) but to an entire group of people including their peers, they are more likely to keep that promise. This is easily applied to the workplace. In other words, if you can make your employees accountable not only to you, their boss, but also their peers, they are more likely to achieve their goals.
Second, if everyone shares their goals and deadlines in front of the group, the group achieves 100% transparency. When everyone is on the same page like this, not just conceptually but also with regard to specific actions and deadlines, you greatly reduce the chance that denial or blame will come into play in the future.
Third, when you can visualize accountability, like putting everything on the whiteboard, you’re accessing the powerful “pictorial superiority effect.” This is the neurological finding that concepts are much more likely to be remembered if presented to our eyes rather than our ears. To what extent do we remember more? Well, when we only hear information, our total recall is about 10% when tested 72 hours later. But, when we see visuals, that number shoots up to 65%. It’s a pretty substantial difference.
Finally, once everyone knows it’s their own responsibility to alert you if something comes up that might affect their deadline (such as an unforeseen circumstance around the office or a greater scope than originally thought), you will dramatically reduce the likelihood that excuses or anxieties will affect the completion of their tasks. Instead, if any excuses or anxieties do arise, you will learn about them in real time, which allows you to manage them individually so no single task will delay the larger goal.
If you follow these steps carefully, more often than not you will bypass the first four stages of accountability (denial, blame, excuses, anxiety), and your employees will be left with only one choice: complete accountability.
