Performance Management is a hot topic in many of today’s business and academic circles. It has moved from the fringes of the HR realm to center stage in the Executive Suite. Along the way, it has redefined the role of HR in many companies. HR groups that once were mere administrative vassals supporting the organization are now an integral part of the organization’s competitive strategy and are honored with a full seat that the round table.

So what changed to move Performance Management from a relatively unimportant HR function to the attention of the Board Room? After all, supervisors have conducted performance evaluations, and organizations have sent employees to training sessions for years. Our research has shown that the ever-pressing need to reduce costs and improve profits is the biggest driver for this change. Human Performance is the last great opportunity in the search for efficiency and productivity gains in most mature industries. Industry has been squeezing productivity and efficiency gains from their processes for years by focusing on the technical aspects of those processes.  However, many industries have reached a point of diminishing returns on the improvements they can realize from these technical aspects and have finally begun focusing on the human processes. The first avenue many companies take to make gains here is to outsource all the non-core human processes to companies that specialize in those processes. These human processes include data entry, billing, call center based functions, and many other repetitive human based processes.  These outsourcing companies are able to reduce costs through operating in lower wage environments and by streamlining these functions through economies of scale. However, as competition has picked up for these outsourced functions, economy of scale is no longer enough and even these industries have to focus on human performance.

As the need for improvement in human performance has risen, some of the best minds in business and academics have come to bear on the issue. As a result, researchers have developed a much more holistic, enterprise wide, systematic, and integrated approach to managing human performance on the job. These very bright people have created some very sophisticated systems that use network and web technology integrating business metrics with HR and Accounting systems to track individual performance against corporate, division, and departmental goals. These systems tell you who is on track and who is not at the push of a button. The problem is that they have tried to remove the human from human performance management. At the end of the day, even with all the automation, a well-designed performance management system is about effective human interaction.  These interactions include setting performance expectations, accepting responsibility for those expectations, holding others accountable for their actions and accepting the consequences for failure or achievement. It really boils down to those four words – Accountability, Expectations, Responsibility and Consequences.  Together they form what we have termed the Accountability Cycle - Expectations set; Responsibility accepted, Accountability held, and Consequences faced.  Without the use of the Accountability Cycle, no Performance Management System will deliver the results you desire. These are, in the terms of my dear friend and colleague, John Nozemack, the basic blocking and tackling skills of management.

In this article, we present to you a process for improving the Accountability Cycle in your organization. The article was designed with the individual manager or supervisor in mind but the concepts are universal so any organization of any size can apply them. However, the larger the organization the harder it is to get everyone in alignment. That is where consultants like my company can play a truly useful role. Facilitating the alignment up and down the chain of command. If you are trying to install the accountability cycle through more than 2 layers of management, then I advise that you get help from professionals that understand the accountability cycle and know how to help you align your organization with you.

Before moving into the nuts and bolts of this article  about how to raise accountability in an organization let me state this: The concepts that I will talk about in no way minimizes the importance of a Performance Management System, automated or otherwise. In fact, a systematic method of implementing the Accountability Cycle will improve your results, make them more consistent and help make them more sustainable over time. After reading this Guide to Improving Workplace Accountability I urge you to check out the wide range of Performance Management tools available today. Simply do a web search for “Performance Management System” or Performance Management Software” and you will find a host of resources.