By John Kimmel

 

“Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple,” according to John C. Maxwell. He has written over 200 books, and the ones I’ve read do in fact make complicated topics very simple—like accountability.

I’ve also found that reading about a topic like accountability and putting it into action are two different things. Accountability only has a tangible impact if the tasks that someone is being held accountable for drive the organization’s results toward a desired goal.

Imagine three people rowing a boat. They see a storm coming, and their goal becomes getting to the dock and out of the water as quickly as possible. One begins rowing at a high and steady tempo, one is struggling to keep the same pace, and one is doing OK keeping the pace. They are moving forward, but the boat is lacking momentum for a quick and smooth sail. The rowers are also wasting a great deal of time and energy. Similarly, if people in your business are moving through the workday like these rowers, they’re probably lacking accountability to achieve success and reach your organization’s goals.

Holding your people accountable can seem complicated and overwhelming. But taking the process one step at a time, the complexity will fade away as each step is completed.

Below is a step-by-step process that can help you hold your team accountable. When the pieces are in place, accountability is easy. Each step has its own merit and will improve your organization.

 

Step 1: Identify Gaps and Duplications

Whenever our firm is rightsizing an organization’s staff, we inevitably find gaps—the jobs that no one is doing, and the jobs that multiple people are doing. The tool we use to uncover gaps and duplications is a set of clearly defined written job descriptions for each team member. We’ve found that about one in 10 petroleum marketers have up-to-date written job descriptions for each employee.

We recently helped a company that, like many smaller businesses, didn’t have a dedicated HR team. Someone was in charge of adding employees to the company’s health insurance plan, but there was a gap when employees needed to be removed. The consequence was that the company was paying for unused employee insurance.

We also found that three people thought they were responsible for ordering pumps, reels and other items related to skid tanks. This resulted in an accumulation of mismatched inventory from different suppliers. Ironically, the same three people did not think they were responsible for entering the items into inventory, so the items were not accounted for properly.

 

Step 2: Spend Time Wisely

It’s important to determine the most valuable tasks for each position. For example, while salespeople need to return e-mails, enter notes in the CRM and prospect for new customers, among other things, the only activity that generates revenue is making sales calls. Therefore, every salesperson should minimize the amount of time spent on other activities—while still handling those activities appropriately—so that they can maximize their time spent talking with customers.

The late Skip Miller taught that “Revenue=Frequency x Competency.” If you increase the frequency of sales calls, your revenue will increase as well. We find that the average sales representative is making three to five face-to-face sales calls per day. With the proper guidance, those same reps can average 10 to 12 calls per day, and that will increase revenue.

Every role in your organization has tasks to do that are more valuable than others. For CFOs, forecasting might be their most valuable task. For GMs, training might be most valuable. Make sure everyone knows what is most important for them to focus on.

 

Step 3: Important and Urgent

The next step is to teach your teams to determine what is important, what is urgent, and how to handle each type of task they encounter. Once they understand how important and urgent tasks are to be prioritized, the ability to manage time will be more efficient.

In Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits,” he used a matrix that organizes tasks based on their urgency and importance. Covey did not create this matrix. As far as I can find, it originated with Dwight D. Eisenhower, who needed to prioritize his time as a supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II and later as U.S. president.

Some tasks that our teams do are neither urgent nor important. I call this the “funny cat video” category. These are tasks that should be removed from the to-do list. This may sound ridiculous, but these tasks consume enormous amounts of time. Who would spend time on tasks that fall into the not urgent and not important box? Apparently, a lot of people. According to a Gallup poll, the average American employee spends 3 hours and 31 minutes a day doing exactly that.

The other category that many employees struggle with is doing tasks that are important but not urgent. These tasks include things like maintenance, training and meetings. Items that fall into this category should be scheduled. The problem is that many employees don’t utilize their calendar and instead rely on memory, which results in poorly maintained equipment, untrained employees and missed meetings.

 

Step 4: Holding Your Team Accountable

Here is where the rubber meets the road. Fortunately, holding the team accountable can be accomplished with a weekly one-on-one meeting between a subordinate and supervisor. While these meetings should have several questions that are asked every week, accountability comes into play when the supervisor asks, “What are the most important things that you must get done this week?”

The following week you discuss each of those tasks, if they were completed, what may have kept them from being completed, and what needs to be done differently to make sure they are completed. If the supervisor is concerned that the solutions provided won’t get the tasks done, it’s a perfect opportunity to lead by sharing your experience and helping the employee achieve success. These meetings usually last 30 minutes to an hour.

Some of you just did the math. Spending an hour with each person that reports to you might be a large amount of time. You might even be thinking, “I have 50 people that report to me, I could never commit this much time to a weekly meeting.” If so, you have just discovered why one person overseeing 50 people is a terrible idea. Most managers can’t handle more than five direct reports with a consistent level of excellence.

Maybe this leads you to considering how you can reorganize your team. Maybe you need a strategic plan or some other piece of the puzzle to get the best possible results from your organization. If that’s the case, I promise you two things. One, you cannot hit a target that you don’t have, and two, when you do hit those targets and look back to consider the effort you made to get there, you will be glad that you did.

 

John J. Kimmel is the author of “Selling with Power.” Kimmel provides custom solutions to increase the effectiveness and profitability of sales teams for petroleum marketers all over the United States. Visit johnjkimmel.com.