A question we commonly ask ourselves and our clients is “What makes an organization high-performing?” Recently, Five Star hosted a Potential for High Performance Seminar and this very same question was posed to the audience. After a few moments of thought, one participant stated that high-performing organizations are accountable. When asked to discuss how a lack of accountability within an organization manifests itself, one respondent commented that when accountability is missing, “nobody can say yes, but everyone can say no.” This response sparked an interesting discussion about the connection between accountability, empowerment, and decision making. Below are some of the thoughts participants offered about how these three concepts are linked and how they work together to contribute to the creation of a high-performance organization.

1. To build accountability there must be clearly defined goals and an agreed upon commitment by    everyone regarding how each person will contribute their unique talents.
2. Accountability requires that individuals earn and receive a level of empowerment from their leader and their team to contribute their personal talents and experiences. True empowerment is given, earned, and accepted.
3. Leaders must believe that their team members are competent and trustworthy to make decisions that are in the best interest of the team and the organization as a whole.
4. Ultimately, there must be someone who takes ownership of the decisions of a team or work group. If this is missing, the finger pointing game quickly ensues.
5. Although decisions must be made rapidly, in order to make good decisions, there must be patience to think.
6. High-performance organizations track and report out on the effectiveness of decisions over time and reward people for making decisions that advance the mission of the organization.

The connection between accountability, empowerment, and decision making and the role they play in creating high-performance organizations can’t be understated. Offer your ideas by commenting on this post below!

Tags: Decision Making, Empowerment, Five Key Drivers of High Performance, Organizational Accountability

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.