Responsibility and accountability are age-old dilemmas. ‘It’s not me Guv!’; ‘Not my role’; ‘It’s him Sir!’; ‘Yes Minister.’ etc. We’ve seen it and heard it all before. ‘Passing the buck’. It’s the stuff of sitcoms the world over. An archetype.
It is also a constant thread in complex organisations. In business, multinationals and the public sector. And in our volatile and uncertain times, it’s the biggest threat to effective customer service.
The challenge to managing the responsibility and accountability dilemma is to identify the advantages of each party or function in the overall value chain. This enables you to compare, clarify and codify the activities necessary to deliver your products and services in the best way possible.
However, as circumstances change, so do these sources of value. Comparative advantages between parties can constantly evolve, as does who they are doing it for and with what urgency.
It’s the VUCA principle all over again. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity – a term coined by military strategists in the post-cold war era. An environment that is even more pronounced today (see Grey Rhinos and Black Swans).
Managing VUCA by mapping the value chain
The trick to navigating VUCA and the ‘responsibility and accountability’ dilemma, is understanding and mapping the value chain. Not to appoint individuals per se. But by recognising the organisation’s sources of value, make sure responsibilities and accountabilities line up with them.
In other words, take a principle-based approach to determine who should be responsible and accountable, as opposed to a fixed organisational chart and role approach.
We find applying the CorbettPrice BE HOLISTIC framework™ helps to determine the end-to-end value chain (the ‘E’ in the model). It identifies the important sources of value. And as you do so, continually remind yourself of the ‘B’ in the acronym (the Business Model). Your purpose. The customers you serve, through which channels and relationships, and with what value proposition.
Our experience – both for Government organisations and multi-national businesses – is that the ‘responsibility and accountability’ dilemma can exist in several forms:
function versus function
centre versus business unit, and
inside versus outside partners.
Function vs. Function
Activities that span functions, requiring cross functional collaboration, can be extremely challenging. These activities can be the most difficult to orchestrate, creating huge bottlenecks when providing products or services to customers.
Case study: The teams at a State Government Agency lacked clarity as to who was responsible for engaging with customers. Different teams would often contradict each other, resulting in a confusing and less than adequate customer experience.
By clarifying and devolving this responsibility to the front line the Agency improved its customer experience. It created a one stop shop for its customers. If the front line ‘shop’ didn’t have all the information, the individuals knew exactly who to consult in the organisation to swiftly get the answers they needed to address customer query.
Centre vs. Business Unit
Another common challenge for organisations is to reach an optimum balance between what value the centre can add compared with each of the business units. This is particularly pertinent in geographic based structures where regional teams build their local presence and expertise, while those with a relatively more global picture enable economies of scale through standardisation and consistency.
Case study: A global telecommunications provider recognised its ‘in-country’ sales teams could develop expertise in tailoring products and services to the local market. But its operational teams could realise significant economies of scale by standardising the back end of the fulfilment process.
The resulting value map was to clearly understand the value that each group delivered. The ‘in-country’ team kept its ear to the ground as to what the specific local market needed and wanted to remain competitive. Remaining responsive and service-oriented. The operations team translated that need into standards that could be delivered at scale and so optimised the required investment.
Inside vs. Outside Partners
Establishing responsibilities and accountabilities internally is challenging enough. It can be even harder when formalising how this should work with partners that sit outside the organisation.
Case study: A media organisation decided to outsource its broadcast playout function in pursuit of cost and quality advantages. The strategy was to free itself up to focus on its core business, which was to produce outstanding content.
To be successful it was imperative that both the media organisation and the outsourced provider knew exactly what their interfaces were. And importantly, were crystal clear as to how this translated into responsibilities and accountabilities if the partnership was to achieve its intended outcome of outstanding content delivered to audiences through easy-to-access channels. Here communication was critical.
Creating an ‘As One’ Culture
By clarifying responsibilities and accountabilities as in these case studies, creates a constantly evolving ‘learning organisation’ and automatically builds a culture of accountability.
Doing so, prevents having to re-invent the wheel every time an organisation faces a new dilemma. Starting from scratch wastes time, money and the ability to grow.
“A learning organisation is an organisation skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights. This definition begins with a simple truth: new ideas are essential if learning is to take place.”
By agreeing an ‘in-principle’ process based on the end-to-end value chain, you lay down a workflow – a value chain map. With the responsibility and accountability for each activity beginning with the evidence.
At CorbettPrice we use a model that describes this process and the important actions that need to be taken to build the value chain map.
It’s a simple mnemonic and acronym - RACI - which stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consult and Inform. This can be adapted to clarify decision making too – but more on that later.
When digitised visually, with appropriately assigned responsibilities and accountabilities, the process is accessible, routine, and for the customer – seamless.
Ultimately you have built a performance tool that can become the ‘single source of truth’ for working effectively and efficiently together. An artefact in the palm of your hand, resulting in better collaboration and faster response times.
As Charles Darwin put it: ‘In the long history of humankind (and animal kind too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.’
More on that later …
