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Monday, May 18, 2009

Six Steps To Accountability

Obtaining commitment — or getting buy in — from your team members on new goals, procedures or methods remains one of the greatest day-to-day challenges for most business leaders.

Brian Cole Miller's book Keeping Employees Accountable for Results: Quick Tips for Busy Managers addresses this challenge square in the face.

The book offers solid advice to managers on how they can help employees to meet organizational goals by committing to them.

Miller’s book takes a very practical approach to obtaining commitment from employees; its many short, readable chapters are organized into a framework of six basic processes for obtaining commitment and holding employees to account:

  1. Setting expectations
  2. Inviting commitment
  3. Measuring results
  4. Providing feedback
  5. Linking results to consequences
  6. Evaluating your own effectiveness

BOTTOMLINE: Getting commitment (not compliance) is the first step in driving new culture changes to take place. Individuals can learn to become more accountable by understanding expectations, buying into the changes, measuring results, offering feedback and understanding both rewards and consequences of behaviors and activities.

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