Accountability & Decision Authority
Leaders say accountability is important.
Executives tell us that accountability is important to the success of their businesses, and for good reason. A culture where accountability is used constructively will deliver positive results, including improved performance, higher employee participation and involvement, increased employee commitment to the work, higher creativity and innovation, and improved employee morale and satisfaction with the work.
There is no accountability without authority.
At the same time, a major theme in many of our client organizations is that decision authorities do not match the accountabilities and objectives that have been assigned to roles. It is a surprising issue when you consider the effort businesses put into selecting the right person for a role. First, you figure out what the role will be and the outputs you expect, where it will be in the business – which department, the work level of the role, and the authority required to deliver the outputs and the salary you are willing to pay. Once that is decided, you recruit the right person, ensure they are fully capable of doing the work and they will fit well in your business. Aren’t we shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot, when we don’t grant employees the authority to do their roles?
Causes of misalignment
When designing roles a fundamental truth is that someone can not truly be held accountable for their work if they do not have full authority to carry out their role. Yet we often do not actively link accountability and decision-making authority.
So, if you have initially designed authority into a role what are the things that get in the way? Here are the major causes of role and authority misalignment.
Wrong person for the role
If an employee cannot do the work and make the necessary decisions required in the role you have selected the wrong candidate to fill the role. The solution is to replace that person. However, often the manager would rather live with the problem. If you justify this by saying this is the best candidate we could find, remember as a manager you will have to fill the performance gap, which takes you away from the work you were hired to do. The solution is to select the right candidate for the role, don’t settle for any less.
New to role
It is not unusual to bring someone into a role where they are seen as the best long-term fit, but they need time to develop and are not ready to conduct the full scope of the role. Under these circumstances, the manager should communicate this assessment to the new role-holder and the plan to bring the role-holder “up to speed.” In this case, it is the manager’s decision when the new role holder is ready to take on the full role and when to delegate full authority to that person. Not being granted full authority in a new position should be seen as a temporary situation and the manager should delegate full authority at the earliest opportunity.
Lack of trust
Outside of the development situation described above when a manager says, “I need to make this decision,” what they are saying is “I don’t trust this person to make the decision.” There are often reasons cited, such as this is a special case, my boss is looking to me in this instance, the employee does not have access to the necessary information, etc. All may have a degree of validity, but the underlying issue is a lack of trust. If you hired this person for their skills and expertise, let them use it. Where mitigating circumstances do exist, make the decision with them, but this should be the exception rather than the rule. There is no such thing as partial accountability in a role. If the incumbent does not have full authority for the role, then the manager does.
Poor organization design
Being in the business of organization design we frequently see the issue of poor organization design, usually it relates to an underlying issue of too many layers in the business or poorly grouped work. An example to illustrate poor grouping is the case of two marketing organizations under the same President where one Marketing VP is accountable for product development and management while the other Marketing VP is accountable for promotion, price, and placement. As a result, every important marketing decision is pushed up to the President who becomes the de facto Marketing VP. The situation will not be resolved until Marketing is brought together under one vice president. Once accountability and authority are aligned the new VP can fully execute the role. An added risk of not addressing organization design issues is the risk of losing talented people if the role design interferes with their ability to their full roles.
Organizational Risk Management
Even when authority is formally attached to roles, it is often tempered by policies that require additional levels of management approval for decisions such as hiring and spending. Most managers have identified these approvals as a key frustration when projects and budgets have been approved within a business plan. Experienced managers say that they can be trusted to work within approved plans and are frustrated that that trust has been removed.
These extra controls are often put in place to centrally manage risk to address conditions such as business slowdown during recessions, or pandemics. While these controls may be put in place as temporary measures senior management is generally slow to remove them, waiting long after the risk being addressed has expired, if removed at all. Understanding that this policy approach of managing risk by removing authority undermines the accountability and trust that is critical to unleashing the business’s potential performance.
NOT truly understanding where decision authority resides
Teamwork is fundamental to business success. Many managers we have spoken with are proud of their efforts to delegate decision authority to their teams — where they say they do not make decisions themselves but trust their teams to make all critical decisions. This is in fact a description of how decisions are made rather than which role is accountable for the decisions. Involving team members to ensure the best possible outcomes and trusting in their collective wisdom is an effective way to engage team members but it does not shift decision accountability or authority from the manager.
The Vice President of Systems Development at a major Canadian retailer was assigned modernizing the business’s online presence through the development of innovative mobile apps for its customer base. He built a strong development team with the necessary skills and knowledge to undertake this critical task. When discussing decision authority, he took pride in the fact that he trusted his team to make all decisions in developing the new capabilities and noted that the team makes all critical decisions. He in fact said that the team together, not him, was accountable for the App development. Exploring this idea further he was asked “If the App does not work as advertised and someone was to be fired – would it be you or the team?” After thinking about this for a few minutes he acknowledged that if someone were to be fired it would be him. He also admitted that if he felt the team’s judgement was on the mark he would support it but if he felt their decision making was wrong, he would intervene. He in fact was retaining accountability for team decisions.
This example illustrates how managers are not clear on the linkage between accountability and decision making in organizations today. People understand and value participating in the decisions of their leaders by being able to provide input and make recommendations into those decisions. However, if employees are led to believe they have decision authority which does not exist then they will feel deceived and trust between the team and their manager will be significantly damaged.
Aligning accountability and decision authority
The consequences of misalignment include underperformance, slow execution, disengaged employees, and finally people who are not ready for promotion when the opportunity comes their way. Additionally, the business will not perform to its potential and it will be paying people for their potential that is not fully utilized.
The fix is quite simple. If you want your people to be fully accountable in their roles:
- Design roles with the right work at the right level.
- Assign decision authority commensurate to role accountabilities.
- Select people capable of doing the work.
- Provide them with the resources and support they need to conduct their work.
When you have taken these steps, you have set people up for success in their roles. You also mitigate risk as accountability and authority are properly aligned and assigned to a person capable of conducting the role. Lastly you have set up your organization to hold people accountable to deliver results.
This blog is part of our ongoing series Organizations that Work. To see all of the blogs in the series that have been posted so far, click here.
Every Tuesday over the next few months, we will be posting blogs that take you from the pain of poor organization design, to identifying the root causes, to the benefits of undertaking strategic organization review. We will discuss the steps needed to effectively align your structure and work with your strategy, and we’ll discuss the processes that take out the guess work and help you to get it done. Through it all we will discuss how to lead the change from start to finish.
If you’d like to speak with us about how we can help you on your journey to an organization that works, please follow us on LinkedIn or book a call directly with one of our partners.
Our approach draws on several bodies of work including Stratified Systems Theory, the work of Dr. Elliott Jaques. For more on Dr. Jaques and his work visit the Requisite Organization International Institute at ROII Requisite – ROII Requisite.