ACCOUNTABILITY The Secret to Success In Life and In Business

Recently, I had a realization. One that requires a lot of vulnerability and courage for me to share with others. Here is the headline – accountability is the secret to success in life and business.

Let me take a step back and tell you how I have reached this aha moment. For context, I run a fairly successful business called TalentLaunch, which is a portfolio of staffing and recruitment companies. Our combined revenue is nearly $200 million annually, making us one of the largest staffing and recruitment companies in the U.S. Most staffing companies never approach our size. In fact, 97% of all staffing companies generate less than $25 million in sales – in an industry that does $160 billion yearly.?

When I started TalentLaunch in 2016, it was with a mission to make a positive impact on the staffing industry and the lives of the people who touch it. I believed that I could help small and mid-sized staffing and recruitment companies overcome some common barriers to growth, all while improving the experiences of candidates and clients alike. Over the past 7 years, we have done a lot to advance our mission. We built a tech-enabled shared services platform that provides best-in-class support in technology, accounting/finance, marketing, learning & development, business intelligence, and strategy/advisory services. However, despite all the improvements in client and candidate experience as shown by excellent NPS scores, we haven’t been able to help our portfolio companies consistently grow. But why not?

I have spent hours upon hours trying to solve this puzzle. And I think I’ve found the key. We can deliver the best support to a staffing company, but if they are not internally aligned around a culture of accountability, we can’t drive the results we want. In fact, there were examples where systems, processes, and even organizational structures were allowing people not to take responsibility for their outcomes. So what does it mean to create a culture of accountability? Here is my take –?

1. Set clear expectations. Provide employees clear and specific expectations around their roles and responsibilities. Make sure there is mutual agreement on the activities and behaviors the employee will deliver.?
2. Provide measurable activities and outcomes. In the staffing industry, it’s proven that certain activities yield certain outcomes. The core roles of sales and recruiting are highly routinized so it’s easy to back into daily/weekly goals that will produce the results. Yes, training is needed to help employees understand how to do these activities well, but setting the goals helps them understand what’s expected of them and whether they are on the right track.?
3. Ensure effective leadership and management. Leadership is about inspiring others to take the desired action. Management is about holding people accountable to expectations. Both are critical abilities for a leader to possess – people need to feel motivated by the company objective as well as pushed to deliver the results expected of them.?

Over the past two years, we have begun the difficult work of evolving our business to address this shortcoming in our culture. Our theme this year is “One Engine. No Limits.” and we are leveraging data to help us understand how to optimize roles and responsibilities, systems and processes to promote accountability and unlock growth. We are defining career pathways so that employees are invested in the future of the business and can see their role in building it. We have been hard at work becoming clear on #1 and #2 in my list above.?

Along the way, we’ve unfortunately uncovered a significant failure. One that negates all the hard work of optimizing our operational model, investing in technology, and elevating the expectations that we have of ourselves. Sadly, I believe we have a failure in leadership.

Leadership is the lynchpin for the whole system. We try to empower leaders with data – they can see all the activities and outcomes happening in their business. We review key metrics with them weekly and discuss trends we’re seeing. They have the opportunity to dig deeper if their business isn’t performing, to have conversations with their staff, to brainstorm alternatives in order to change the direction of that trendline. Except that’s not happening. Instead, we forgive those who don’t meet their agreed upon expectations. We accept excuses, which means we accept mediocrity. By doing this, we are essentially telling employees that we are OK with average. Of course, we communicate our performance short-comings and try to rally the team with our vision. But actions speak louder than words and while we can create excitement around growth, if we continue to allow people to underperform around the expectations set for them, we only have ourselves to blame. A culture that supports mediocrity can actually PREVENT you from hiring and retaining staff who want to create the success you want to see in your business. Those that remain are OK being part of a company that’s not growing long-term. I believe this is how staffing companies get stuck in the maze of complacency.

Changing this mindset is incredibly difficult. This is the work TalentLaunch has now begun because we want to be the change agents for staffing companies who truly want to grow. It’s hard work so I’m drawing on a variety of my life experiences to help me see where we need to go.?

Sports are often an overused metaphor for life. But my work as a high school wrestling coach made me realize what was missing at TalentLaunch. In wrestling, you have to work hard to be great. Natural talent is not enough, not with all the other naturally talented kids out there working hard to get even better. And you need coaches to hold wrestlers – especially high school kids! - accountable for the work required and to push that wrestler past their mental limits. To push them when they want to give up. To step in when that wrestler is tired and make them do one more. Because we all know in strength training, pushing yourself to failure is where the growth happens. That wrestler might not like that coach in the moment, but they absolutely love that coach when they get their hand raised in a match and achieve their goals for the season.?

At the beginning of every wrestling season, we establish our standards. We put the wrestlers through a tough, but typical, practice. Our high expectations mean we end up losing a bunch of kids who do not want to work that hard. That’s perfectly fine. The wrestlers who choose to continue accept our expectations and understand we will hold them accountable to them. Those wrestlers get a ton better as the season progresses. Those wrestlers become top wrestlers in the state. In fact, my team has been state runners-up multiple times over the past 5 years.

This same culture of accountability is what we need at TalentLaunch. We need leaders to be coaches to their employees. To encourage employees to become their best selves every day. To push them out of their comfort zone. To expect more from them than they maybe do from themselves. We already set high standards for performance, but we have failed to manage people to them. We have to recognize that not everyone will be a fit for these expectations. Not everyone wants to work that hard. That’s ok. If we consistently manage to these expectations, we will eventually have a staff of people committed to meeting those standards everyday. That is where the growth will happen.?

We can provide all the technology and bells and whistles to a staffing company. But without a culture of accountability, we won’t have people leveraging it in a way that drives growth. Hopefully, these words can help other companies who might be going through the same challenges. Know that you are not alone. Now, let’s get out there and create the change we want to see.