Clear accountability at the top is key to business success

When aiming for success, organisations face many challenges. The key to solving those challenges, and enabling success, is to be clear who is accountable for solving them, so that the solution can be delegated, and then providing appropriate leadership and management to achieve accountability.

This is all about getting the right people, in the right seats. Or as Jim Collins in his book "Good to great" - the right people on the bus, in the right seats.

There are 3 key areas accountability of any organisation:

• marketing and revenue generation

• operational delivery

• finance and reporting

plus someone needs to be accountability for coordinating, or "integrating", all of them.

No one area is more important than the other. All are important.

To be successful the organisation needs to be strong in each of the 3 areas of delivery - marketing and revenue (sales), operations, and finance. To be strong in each area of the organisation, needs an effective leader accountable for that area.

Being "accountable" as the leader doesn't necessarily mean "doing" - it means being accountable to the leaders of the other areas. Whilst all 3 areas need to be "strong", at any point in time they will rarely be "equal" - there will often be times when marketing and sales sells a bit more than the operations team can cope with; or that the operations team has a bit more capacity than the marketing and sales team has sold.

Therefore if there are effective leaders of strong teams, there will also be a need for an effective leader to coordinate or integrate all 3 areas of the organisation. To listen, to lead, and to manage the accountabilities of each team leader, to enable a truly successful team. This can be one person "integrating" the teams, or in an ideal world 2 people, as EOS describes it, an integrator and a visionary. The Steve Wozniak to Steve Jobs at Apple, the Paul Allen to Bill Gates at Microsoft, or many other examples that you may be able to think of in companies you know, big and small.

EOS gives great tools for developing the people structure of a business, and getting the right people, in the right seats. To enable your success, or if you have challenges in your business, or within a team, one of the first places to look is at who is accountable for what - do you have the right people, in the right seats, clear of their own accountabilities, and of each other's accountabilities?

To find out more, I'd encourage you to watch the EOS video blog post about building an accountability chart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm0cYGj3YMM

As Mark O'Donnell from EOS explains, you need to develop your own accountability chart aligned to your own organisation's needs.

In our experience, ICT - the technology that enables the access to and flow of information, automation, and communication is key to modern businesses. You need someone accountable for ICT. For most organisations with 10 - 250 staff, it is often not a full time role. But you do need to know who is accountable for your ICT, and that they have relevant skills to provide the strength to support and enable all the other teams to work together effectively, and efficiently.

Your business may well look more like this - although because people are key to your business, I would encourage you to consider "HR" or "People" being a top level accountability too.

If you'd like to discuss ensuring you have an appropriate virtual CIO, accountable for your ICT, to your integrator/managing director/CEO, feel free to get in touch with us.