Why Accountability Drives Performance

Why do some employees seem always to get things done on time and as expected, while others struggle?  Is it in their DNA? Is it an organizational culture that condones missed deadlines so that some people do not feel the pressure to perform as well? Are incentives, like bonuses, or penalties, like losing a job, accomplishing their objectives?

Accountability is key to drive business performance

Social Loafing

In social psychology, “social loafing” is a phenomenon of a person exerting less effort to achieve a goal when working in a group than when they work alone. 
This is one of the main reasons groups can be less productive than the combined productivity of their members working as individuals.  If this is the case, how could we raise a team’s performance to be equal to or greater than the sum of its individual’s potential?

Accountability Drives People

The social loafing effect is worsened when an organization experiences high growth, or a major change, causing it to enter “reactive” mode.  When this happens, everybody scrambles to get the things done, reactively and haphazardly. This causes:

• Things to fall through the cracks more often
• Things to not get done or to get done late
• Clients becoming frustrated with unmet expectations
• Compliance efforts to suffer
• Revenue to get impacted and costs to soar

Since everybody is busy, there is no time to get things under control.  Finger pointing, burn out, apathy, or chaos ensue.
Over the years, a number of organizational theories to enhance group performance have been tried:

• Small organizational spans of control
• KPIs tied to the business’ strategy
• Balanced scorecards
• Individual and group performance reviews against well defined goals and/or expectations
• Empowerment structures

All these efforts have led to mixed results.  The real fix is:  Accountability!
Learn more by downloading our Ultimate Guide to Accountability in the Workplace here:

 

Accountability As The Agent Of Change

When accountability is embedded in an organization’s culture, and when it is transparent and directly tied to performance reviews and rewards, a high-performance organization is born.  Compliance quality, client satisfaction, throughput, all dramatically improve.
CommandHound was built from the ground up specifically to use accountability to drive business performance. 
When accountability is applied to the impending chaos, a sense of individual performance and contribution that is visible and rewarded will be instilled.  
There will be a sense of being part of a small village again — where the pride of belonging and doing things well returns.  
Where rewards are fairly allocated to better performers.  Where the sense of empowerment further enhances the organization’s ability to get things done.
CommandHound is an “accountability” enabling platform.  Nothing else.  Assign, escalate, and track execution by person is what is all about.  Simple.  No need to replace any of the existing systems. No need to integrate into anything — just plain old accountability and to making sure things get done.