A Framework for Accountability

Rory Eakin -

Sharing wisdom - something I want to remember for my work. From Zach Weinberg:

When meeting/ supporting a founder (including yourself), three questions:

  • For the next 12months, what are your top three priorities for this business?

(Most founders have this no problem - can easily name)

  • For these 3 priorities, what are the 3-5 most important projects/work streams that need to get done for this metric that you care about to be hit?

(~9-12 projects total, key initiatives the company must do to achieve the priorities. Most founders have these too, can talk through these at granular level.)

  • Great - now for each of these projects, which person is accountable to deliver it?

This resonates with me. Zach points out there should be a single name - a point of accountability. The same person can be in charge of multiple projects, but there should be no confusion about who needs to lead the work, who needs to push for resources and drive cross functional collaboration to ensure the project gets done.

The second part is going to ask the person if they know they are leading and accountable. This is a good test of the organization integrity and communication. A clear chart that has a single name against each priority, which is known to the key stakeholders internally, is a positive sign for a culture of accountability and achievement.

This exercise was framed to me in the negative ('who would be fired..') but it is just as powerful in the positive ('who will be promoted'). In my experience, great employees would love the chance to own the project ex ante. Too often, when there is vague ownership up and coming leaders don't get the credit they deserve for taking a risk, owning a key deliverable and achieving the desired outcome.

The framework is incredible simple. Yet, I am quite sure there were many times at CircleUp we didn't have this level of clarity and ownership. Too often the names in the box would be me or my co-founder simply because we didn't go through the exercise to delegate (read: empower) the task to someone else. Which is disempowering to the team and contributes to founder burnout. I'm writing this down now so I will remember to improve.