Apply strategy with an Accountability Matrix

Not Keanu's matrix. Geologists refer to the material in which something beautiful, meaningful or desirable is embedded as the matrix. Here, it's the quartz holding the crystal. I want to encourage you to build a matrix to hold your teams.

Strategy and plans are all for nothing without people. And yet, “implementation” is generally built up as a list of tasks spread over time, with humans made invisible. Don’t plan like that: begin with an accountability matrix. If it’s clear who is overseeing what, then everything else through planning to delivery become much easier.

Simple tools that get used beat complex tools that don't. And who doesn't love a one-page tool? I’ll share two redacted examples from two previous clients this year.

An Executive Team accountability matrix

For a newly formed NFP Exec team, I ran three half-day conversations, loosely structured:

• Session 1: Expectations, hope and fears. How will we be as a team?
• Session 2: Operations and functionality. How will we work as a team?
• Session 3: Ambition How will we build the future?

These unstructured sessions revealed what steps were needed to grow the team’s effectiveness. In this case, half-way through the second session, the question emerged:

When are we The Exec, running the organisation, and when are we An Exec, running our department??

I showed them a model and we set about completing it. Here is the Exec accountability matrix, edited for anonymity and edited to illustrate the idea.?

?

Part of the point is the conversation that goes into making this. All of the following points are nuances for debate and agreement as a team, and this builds cohesion and understanding.

Let’s talk about EVP as an example. Of course the employee experience is a prime responsibility of one Executive. But the lived reality of that (do the team leaders wish a happy birthday to their team members?) lies in the culture of each department. So it must be a shared and a solo accountability.

But with an item such as regulatory compliance, we don’t need all the group to be experts, tracking everything. We need one expert, and everyone needs to be aware. Of course you can quibble with any of these categorisations, and your organisation might need something different.

Another benefit is supporting continuous learning. After a significant issue, this matrix allows the Executive to reflect on how the group should think differently. Perhaps an issue listed as ‘Group’ should actually be categorised as a single person’s accountability?

Yet another is clarity for the CEO’s management of the group. The CEO can set clear expectations, and support with mentoring and coaching. Also, can insist on processes that allow the group accountabilities to be discharged. It’s all very well saying ‘Customer Risk’ is a group accountability, but in practice how is that accountability discharged – what information is shared, when and how? Perhaps a quarterly agenda item?

And finally, and I think most importantly, is clarity for the (majority of) staff outside the Executive. “What the hell do Executive do in their meetings?” is a frequent and quite reasonable question. The issues themselves, the debates and productive conflicts, can all stay private. But the notion that Exec take collective responsibility for X gives certainty and clarity for staff, and enables managers to understand better the climate they are operating within.

A project accountability matrix

My next example is from a project – a time-and-budget-bound activity with a clear end point, that is separate from business as usual. In this situation, key challenges included:

• articulating the project roles as distinct from the BAU
• managing the potential tension between project and BAU
• clarifying the distinctions between the role of the project manager, a collective and individual managers with work package responsibilities

?Superficially similar, the key here is the addition of the Project Manager role. The placement “above” the “Leadership Group” was a conscious choice: an expression that they would call the shots on this project, regardless of the seniority of the leadership group (for context, one of these people was the Deputy Director/CEO).

Expressing how positional power changes in project roles compared to BAU role is often unspoken. It feels hard to do at the outset but it’s WAY harder to fix on the fly, when workarounds have emerged and political bargaining around resources has taken root.

Another critical element in this matrix is the levelling of the leadership group. On a major project an attitude of all animals are equal but some are more equal than others can take hold. But, while the singer and guitarist get the spotlight, without the team on the mixing desk no-one hears the song.

?This was similarly delivered through a facilitated conversation. It was worked up with the team in parallel with other pure project-management-y documents such as a schedule and a risk register. Again, the conversation around who’s doing what brought clarity for everyone and also some productive airing of potential risks. Did Team A know how early Team B needed information? Did Team C know that Team D was dependent on a tricky external partner?

In the end, the only thing that gets projects done is people. And getting everyone on the same (single!) page makes that more likely.

Summary

Working through an accountability matrix in a team means

• Everyone, inside and outside the team, gets clarity
• Overlaps or gaps in accountabilities are spotted early
• The group builds collegiality and trust
• The Leader can manage the team transparently and openly based on shared expectation
• Each team member can see what they need to do and be aware of

?Final comment

In the Public Service and in NFPs I encountered paradoxical barrier to good teamwork – job titles. The person holding the title “Product Owner” or “Accountant” may have a very clear sense of their job, which carries with it a number of assumptions encoded in their sector specialism. But this doesn’t necessarily translate to the other team members.

The matrix approach cuts through all that by defining output. When this is written as provide monthly financial reports and make sure everyone gets paid then there is no confusion about the word “Accountant”.

Fin

I’m pretty obsessed with making simple tools that get things done. One thing I’d love to get done is “get feedback on newsletters” but choices by others – by a product owner, in fact – make that difficult. Help me out by commenting or sending a DM, I love to know what readers are thinking.

See you next biweek.

Paul