Insights: Accountability

Many clients have recently asked us for our top recommendations for project management software and tools.  Our experience with these tools is mostly derived from helping our clients incorporate them into their processes while we add the accountability layer that is often missing in these tools to make sure things get done.

Do you think your business has a strong culture of accountability?  Do people feel proud to work there and committed to getting things done? Do you think employees clearly know what is expected of them and how their performance will be rewarded?   

Information security at law firms is becoming a more pressing issue than ever before. News stories like the recent Equifax data breach show just how vulnerable sensitive data has become to online threats.

We have found that every team is made up of two broad types of people– the Idea Makers and the Doers. If you’ve ever taken a Myers Briggs test, you might know these two groups as Judgers (J) and Perceivers (P).

Since its inception, the CommandHound team has been collecting data from its users to see how they are using the software to drive accountability in their organizations and to learn from which feature they are getting the most value.  
Across all of the industries in which CommandHound has been employed, these are the top three ways that it is being used most effectively.

The gig economy is here to stay.   Intuit estimates that by 2020, as many as 40 percent of Americans will be contingent, or “gig” workers.  Gig workers can be freelancers, independent contractors, or any other outsourced employees who are hired on a per-project basis.
Some of these contingent workers choose to work outside of a payroll system either as full-time freelancers or as part-time workers who supplement their income by picking up gigs. Others take contingent jobs out of necessity even though they would prefer full-time employee status.

It seems like nowadays everybody is talking about accountability in the workplace and how critical it is to make sure things get done. There are so many conversations about how hard it is to implement accountability and how hard it is to change the culture of the business so that it becomes a permanent change.   

 
Whether working in an office with fewer than ten people, or a massive corporation with thousands of employees, we have all come across issues of how to hold individual team members accountable for their work.
As projects and teams get larger, more complicated, and less well-defined, it can be increasingly difficult to make sure that team members are staying on top of their own tasks so that the whole project stays on track.

Although CEOs often dictate company culture, and might sometimes even seem above the rules, recent research indicates that company structures are increasingly necessary to monitor upper-level executives and to hold them accountable for their behavior.
Putting practices and strategies in place to hold executives accountable to ethical requirements is necessary and can save corporations many headaches in the long run.

I’ve always believed that accountability is achieved when people feel a sense of belonging and personal pride of being part of a great organization, with great leaders, doing something worthwhile.  
Once employees truly buy into the meaning and mission of an organization, all they need is a road map of where the organization is headed, what needs to be done, and when it needs to be completed.  With this road map they can see how their work contributes to the overall success of the company.