Four ways to create more accountability in your team
Becoming digitally mature requires changes across many areas of how an organisation operates – from culture and communications to how data is managed and how easy it is for staff to fulfil day-to-day tasks.
We’ve all heard that culture eats strategy for breakfast. In other words, you can create a flawless strategy on paper, but team culture will decide whether it works.
Culture is only one of 15 competencies in my digital maturity framework. But it really is the one that makes or breaks the process of becoming a more digitally mature organisation.
There are many behaviours that create a culture of an organisation or a team. But one of the most important ones is accountability. It’s one of five characteristics of effective teams according to Lencioni.
Here are four ways your team and organisation can nurture accountability:
1. Speak up
It can be awkward to call out when things aren't working. It’s easier to praise people’s work than to be the bearer of bad news, even when this is supported by data. It’s much nicer to hear praise for the work we’ve done than to hear that it wasn’t a success.
Honesty can sometimes be uncomfortable, but it's essential for accountability. We need to know what is working and what is not, so we can improve.
Accountability requires bravery
You have to embrace your failures and see them as an opportunity to learn and develop. Sometimes you have to be the bearer of bad news and tell the Emperor that they are naked.
Accountability also requires social (and political) intelligence. Pick your battles. When you have data and facts on your side, be constructive, propositional. And also know when to step back. Not every battle can be won.
As a digital leader, you need to model the behaviour you want to encourage. Acknowledge why it might be difficult to speak up. Show your team it's possible to speak up safely. Thank your colleagues whenever they give you feedback. And give them an insight into what action you’ll take as a result of it.
2. Learn how to give high quality feedback
We can't hold ourselves and each other accountable if we don’t embrace feedback.
Too many of us are terrified of giving or receiving feedback, which is understandable, given most people are never taught to do it well! But we simply can’t create accountable teams without honest and open reflection.
Feedback should be specific. Try to:
Focus on facts, things you know for sure, rather than your own assumptions. For example, ‘I felt ignored’, because you know how you felt, instead of ‘you were ignoring me’, because you don’t know if this is what they were doing unless they tell you.
Be specific - describe what happened in a specific situation rather than making sweeping generalisations like ‘you always…’ and ‘you never…’
Focus on solutions and use positive language. Say what you want to see happen, not what you don’t want.
Highlight specific actions or behaviours and the impact of them on you. For example, “When you said X in that meeting, I felt undermined because…'
Remember to also give specific positive feedback. Just saying ‘well done’ or ‘good job’ is not specific enough; ‘When we were working on this feature, it was helpful when you said this’ is better.
We can all recognise a so-called ‘feedback sandwich’ - when less glowing feedback is communicated between two pieces of positive feedback. As people know that this is how it works, they often cannot hear the initial positive feedback because they are waiting for the hit. So you can prepare people for how you’ll give them feedback or give best feedback at the end as people will be able to hear it.
I find this format for giving feedback particularly helpful: ‘What I really liked is this, and I would like to see more of that.’
It’s great because it is solutions focussed and positive. It makes the feedback giver think carefully what change they want to see and ask for. So feedback is more considered. It also helps feedback receiver understand better what is required from them. They can ask questions to clarify what this means which means they are more likely to own this outcome.
3. Get comfortable with difference
There are as many different opinions as there are people in your organisation
The IT team may feel your data management is perfect because it follows the highest standards for security and cleaning. The fundraising team may feel that the same data management practices are terrible, because it takes weeks to get their hands on vital data about supporters.
We bring our different experiences, knowledge and expectations to our work. We see different problems and different solutions, too. This is how many organisations, even the smallest ones, end up working in silos.
Staying silent won’t make those differences go away. We need to bring them out in the open and start getting to grips with them.
This is why I recommend that my Digital Maturity Assessment is done by a few stakeholders in the organisation. The assessment isn’t a diagnostic tool but a tool designed to surface perspectives on how digital works, from people all around your organisation, in a systematic and psychologically safe – not personal – way.
Coworkers have an opportunity to stand in each other’s shoes. They can better understand their colleagues’ needs and priorities, identify priorities more effectively, and be more accountable to each other.
4. Share your progress
Accountability depends on transparency. It’s important that the whole team is clear on what they need to achieve, what progress they are making, and how far they still have to go.
I’ve seen this done particularly well at Parkinsons UK. They put the results of their Digital Maturity Assessment up where everybody could see them. Not only could everybody see the current rating on each part of the assessment, but everybody could see the targets they were aiming towards, too.
This helped people understand what direction they needed to move in, what needed to change, and to feel accountable to their peers in being part of that change.
Go further with Agile, a process that fosters accountability and thrives on feedback
Most people are familiar with agile as a methodology for managing digital projects. But many teams and companies are extending this approach to everything they do.
In Agile, team members have roles which are not always linked to their job title. For example, a product owner may not be the most senior person but the person who has skills, knowledge and time commitment to make decisions. They are trusted to deliver their tasks and sign off on work.
In Agile, there’s constant evaluation of the work done in that day/that week/that sprint - so feedback is an essential part of the process. Everyone in the team is responsible for delivering something on the project, no one is there to just observe. Everyone is accountable to the team.
In my experience everyone who was a part of an Agile project has loved it. Accountability is essential for teams and organisations to be effective. But it requires transparency, bravery and solutions orientated approach to communicating with colleagues. It means giving people agency to deliver something and holding them to account if they don’t. Agile projects are a good way of testing out how the principles of agile culture work in your organisation.
Are you experimenting with Agile, or trying out new approaches to feedback? Let me know how you get on!
