People Day Organizational Accountability
Organizational accountability is critical to growing your company. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great , says that the first decision you need to make is to put the right people in the right seats.
The term “right seats” refers to the key functional areas that are needed at the current stage of your company’s life cycle.
Making sure you have the right people in those seats—that is, people with the needed skills and abilities—requires reflection and action on your part. Taking the necessary actions to align your people with key functions, and assigning specific and measurable accountabilities, will determine whether your company is positioned for growth.
After completing this module, you will be able to:
 Align your people with the company’s functional needs.
 Develop a system of accountability in your organization.
 Identify leading and lagging indicators for your team members.
Note: Content for this session was provided by Gazelles Systems.
Accelerator – An Entrepreneurs’ Organization Program
© Entrepreneurs’ Organization 2012
Participant Guide  1

Organizational Accountability
Seats – Heads of Departments – Accountability
1 2
Role/Key Position Name
Leading Indicator
(Key performance indicators)
Head of Company
3
People Day
Lagging
Indicator/Outcome
(P/L or B/S items)
Sales & Marketing

Sales

Marketing
Operations

Mfg/Svc Delivery

Research & Dev
Finance &
Accounting

Treasury

Controller
HR/Learning/People
Information Tech
Customer Satisfaction
Heads of Bus Units




Identify: 1. More than 1 person in a seat; 2. Person in more than 1 seat; 3. Empty seats; 4. Enthusiastically rehire
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© Entrepreneurs’ Organization 2012

People Day Organizational Accountability
Lagging Indicators (Laggers)
 Lagging indicators measure outcomes and help you look at past performance . They give you insight into what happened or, in other words, the history.
 There is nothing you can do to change the results once you receive information represented by a lagger.
Leader Indicators (Leaders)
 Leading indicators are future-looking.
 They provide information to give you future insight into whether you will hit your desired outcome.
Example: Sales Function
Lagging Indicator – number of contracts signed or income from sales
Leading Indicator – number of proposals generated or volume of projected sales represented by the pending proposals
Accelerator – An Entrepreneurs’ Organization Program
© Entrepreneurs’ Organization 2012
Participant Guide  3

Organizational Accountability
Ask yourself:
People Day


Have you identified all the key functions you need to run your business today? To take you to the next level of growth?
Is it clear who ’s accountable for each function?
 Do you have the right people in each function?
 How are you measuring each function?
Assess the current situation:
Question
1.
What functions have more than one person accountable?
2.
Who is sitting in more than one seat?
Answer
Do what?
3.
What functional areas are not doing as well as you would like?
Identify the actions you will take to make sure you have the right people in the right seats:
Who
’s accountable?
By when?
4  Participant Guide Accelerator – An Entrepreneurs’ Organization Program
© Entrepreneurs’ Organization 2012

People Day Organizational Accountability
 Organizational accountability starts with having the right people in the right seats.
 Identify all the necessary functions based on where your company is in its life cycle.
 Assess who’s in each seat and whether they’re the right person for the role.
 Make adjustments as needed to drive growth.
 Develop measurable indicators to hold people (and functions) accountable.
 Monitor and discuss progress at staff meetings, one-on-one’s, and performance evaluations to make sure your people are on track to achieve the outcomes.
Suggested Follow-up for This Session
1.
Finish developing your leader and lagger indicators if you didn’t get them done today.
 Consider doing this activity with your leadership team.
2.
Share the indicators with the individuals in each seat to get their reactions and buy-in.
3.
Schedule regular times to review the indicators against performance, and follow up with individuals in the seats as needed.
4.
Schedule a time to reassess the company’s functional areas when it reaches its next major milestone of growth.
References
 Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don’t, Jim Collins,
October 2001
Accelerator – An Entrepreneurs’ Organization Program
© Entrepreneurs’ Organization 2012
Participant Guide  5

Organizational Accountability
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People Day
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© Entrepreneurs’ Organization 2012