The 3 Steps To Accountability
Accountability. The quality or state of being accountable. Accountable. subject to giving an account : ANSWERABLE. Account. A statement or exposition of reasons, causes, or motives.
Accountability. An obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.
Managers, how do you hold your sales team and employees accountable? Salespeople, how do you hold yourself accountable?
The main reason people resist something or simply don’t do it is simpler than you may think and ironically also the main reason we all can struggle with accountability.
We don’t know how to do it!
ACTION IDEA: Think about things you’re resisting now. Consider times from your past where you didn’t want to do something or quit something? If you carefully look back and stay open, you will find that the reality was there was something you didn’t know or understand about how to do it so consequently you started to lose interest and didn’t stay with it.
When you know what you’re doing, you’re good at it and you’re winning you’re WAY more likely to want to repeat that behavior.
3 Steps to Accountability: What we tell our clients
- Set clear expectations
- Create structure
- Deliver feedback with consequences
Let’s go over these in a little more detail. Managers, start thinking with how you can use these steps with your team (and yourself… because if you can’t keep yourself accountable, ain’t no way you’re holding anyone else accountable or anyone going to take you seriously.)
ONE: Set clear expectations.
People need targets, goals and direction. You have a goal or a target, here is what needs to happen to get there. There’s more than one way to get there on Google maps but once you select a route, there appears very clear cut directions that you follow to arrive at your destination.
Take the guess work out and make it simple. If I’m a salesperson and to make $15,000 per month, I need to sell 20 widgets in a month, then what is required to get there? How many phone calls, appointments, presentations, proposals will be required to get to 20? Once I know that I can extrapolate very clear expectations of daily activity. Maybe that’s 250 dials, 4 appointments and 3 presentations with 2 proposals per day…? Or what if you know that by just sending our 4 proposals per day you get at least one back?
Give yourself very clear expectations on activity and action.
Managers, make the expectations you have of your people simple and thoughtless. Meaning they shouldn’t have to think about any of it, just do it. Thinking about it, slows everything down. How many calls do you want your people to make? What exactly do you want them to say? Have they been practiced, drilled and rehearsed? What time do we start? How long will our morning huddle be? What will we do in that huddle? Is everyone warmed up and present? Here’s the mission for the day, you know what to do, what to say, let’s roll! Set very clear and simple expectations.
TWO: Create Structure
People are creatures of habit. We all perform better when we can operate on routines. Give yourself and/or your team stability. How much instability is in the world right now? Managers, give your team a stable environment to work. Salespeople, when you create structure for yourself you are empowered to take the massive amounts of action required to smash your goals and targets into itty bitty pieces.
Remember, thinking about it just slows everything down. Structure creates that stability and eliminates thought from slowing you down. This is you creating habits for yourself and your team that you can rely on for forward momentum and positive results.
THREE: Deliver Feedback (with consequences)
This is key to the steps to accountability. Consequence is a conclusion derived through logic. There is nothing negative about it or nothing positive about it either. Consequence is a very neutral word. It just is. Do this, get that. Eat lean, train hard, look better naked. Period. Smoke meth, ignore good oral hygiene, lose teeth.
Consequence is the result of choice and behavior.
Having consequences is a form of feedback. Are you moving closer to or further away from the target? Feedback is data, it is information to use to adjust course along the way to your success. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. That’s feedback.
Managers, how are your people executing on their expectations? Salespeople, are you executing on your expectations and are you doing it with consistency? What happens when you complete your mission and what happens when you don’t? How about, what are the consequences for not even trying or half-assing the assignment?
Never half-ass anything. Go whole-ass or don’t go at all.”
-David Bradley
CONCLUSION: 3 Steps to accountability
So whether this is for you, your team or both, here’s the plan. Set clear expectations, create structure and deliver feedback with consequences. And this applies to anything you’re looking to accomplish. Manager’s you need to hit a sales target, this is the way. Salespeople, you want to pay off your house in half the time, this is how it gets done. You need to have accountability in place because without it, you’ll just be making it harder on yourself to reach your destination.
Would you like to see how we apply these three steps to making Cardone University work for our clients? Right now we’re offing a complementary consultation on making Cardone U work through our new Coaching Program. Where we’ll look at where your business is at currently, where you’d like it to be and then put together a clear cut plan on how to get there and how to hold everyone accountable to the mission.
