Every Leader is Different! What I did as a Leader at Lockheed Martin! It’s About Accountability

From GW's Management Workbench....

This post relates to what I did on the job about accountability, one of the hard-skill competencies of the Leadership function of management. Recall there are 6 hard-skill functions of leadership management: Strategy, Planning, Organizing, Leadership, Teamwork, and Control. Each function has its own competencies, and Accountability is a competency of Leadership.

My last post identified the difference between Responsibility and Accountability, two hard-skill competencies of the function of Leadership.?

The important point of any conflict a company has between departments or individuals is that over 90% of these conflicts are caused because of not knowing who has the authority to make decisions on the work or issue. While the conflict can become serious, high-growth companies resolve them at the level of conflict, without department managers or higher executives getting involved. Do you?

They do this by themselves, just like I did in the following example, but you cannot resolve major conflicts with soft skill competencies of empathy, sympathy, or kindness, because there is no resolution, just exacerbates the conflict.

This leads me to a consulting assignment I had in an earlier day at a prominent aerospace company, Lockheed-Martin, in Boulder, Colorado, which I will tell you what I did as a leader.?

I was on a management development assignment with this company when the management asked me to facilitate a major conflict that was occurring between the operational managers involved with fuselages. (Remember, I'm an English major) The conflict was because nobody knew who had “accountability” for pricing these products.

My first question with this group of managers was, “who thinks they are accountable for pricing these products?” Every hand rose, and each said they were accountable for the pricing.

I then went to the chalkboard to trace the line of authority for pricing, because that’s the common practice that their lower units used to resolve conflicts. It’s a practice which every leader should understand accomplishing the same thing.

It took several hours to “trace the authority” for decision making with these 6 executives, and it turned out that none had direct authority for pricing the fuselage products. That authority occurred on the plant floor at the last step in assembly. I literally traced the line of authority to that position.

That's the difference between Responsibility and Accountability! The decision-making authority!

Nobody was upset; nobody was condescending. As a team, they agreed that the last point of production was where the authority for determining pricing should be.

So that’s the lesson I leave with all you leadership managers out there. When you have a conflict within your organization, they usually cause it because nobody knows who has the authority to make decisions, and learning what I did at Lockheed-Martin that day is your example. ?There is an Axiom of Accountability you should master.

Trace the line of authority. ?It really is a pragmatic way of working, and when you train your people on doing it themselves, when any conflict arises, you find you can use empathy and kindness thereafter.

Suivez-Moi!

GW

?Grow in Your Leadership Position!

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