One of the questions I frequently get from MBA students is “How do you hold someone accountable when you don’t have any authority over them?” One way is to use visual controls.
Visual controls are a public display of the performance data for an individual, group, or system. The scoreboards you see at sporting events, such as baseball, football, and basketball games, are public displays that let anyone looking at them know the status of the game. Players and coaches use scoreboards to help them determine whether to make changes, such as calling a timeout, substituting players, or calling different plays. They are called visual control because they provide feedback on performance in a visual form, thereby allowing for alterations to be made in an attempt to improve performance.
Some years ago, USA Today published the on-time arrival statistics for each of the major airlines. USA Today had no authority, but they did have the data and they made it public in a chart showing where each airline stood. Once this information became available, passengers starting making decisions based it and the airlines worked to improve their on-time statistics. Airlines began accounting for why they were late (understanding what contributed to the lateness and what could be done to correct it) and making changes in their operations to improve their performance in hope that the next time USA Today published the list they would be able to show improvement.
Sometimes you do not have the authority to hold people accountable. However, if you can make the performance data public through the form of a display or visual control, the ensuing conversations can help increase accountability.
Jeff, this is very good, and requires an AND (as opposed to a BUT) comment – absent a culture of accountability, anything including visual controls will be a band-aid that will eventually lose its power. The trick is to create that culture and then see what controls are needed to sustain it.
Best,
Ed
“How do you hold someone accountable when you don’t have any authority over them?”
If you are using visual controls to create accountability in the absence of authority, you have to be a fairly long way from being able to create a culture of accountability.
I am quite sure I am not in either you or Jeffrey’s league but it would seem like visual controls is the start of creating accountability in your sphere of influence within the company.
Ed
Good point, but it begs the question of how you build a culture of accountability. One way to start building such a culture to is use visual controls, though it is clearly not sufficient in an of itself.