Recommended Resource – The Welch Way

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The Welch Way
a weekly BusinessWeek column and podcast
by Jack and Suzy Welch

About the Reference

The Welch Way is a weekly BusinessWeek column and podcast authored by former GE CEO Jack Welch and his wife, the former editor of the Harvard Business Review, Suzy Welch. These articles cover a wide range of business and career topics offering readers the insights of one of America’s most respected Chief Executives.

Benefits of Using this Reference

Mr. and Mrs. Welch have both achieved unparalleled personal and business success and share their life’s lessons in an actionable way each week within their column. StrategyDriven contributors find great value in The Welch Way not only because it contains step-by-step methods to deal with today’s business and career challenges but because the topics addressed often focus on those areas important to organization’s aspiring to become more strategy driven.

Many of the best practice recommendations found on the StrategyDriven website compliment the actions prescribed in The Welch Way, making this column a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Organizational Accountability – Pillars of Accountability

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StrategyDriven Organizational Accountability PrincipleOrganizational accountability exists when all members of the workforce individually and collectively act to consequentially promote the timely accomplishment of the organization’s mission.

StrategyDriven Contributors

Building an accountable organization can be a long and arduous task; renovating an entitlement organization even more difficult. During this construction project, many able builders will be lost, the victims of a harsh environment that naturally exists between the competent who seek the rightfully earned rewards of performance-based accountability and the low performers struggling to hold on to their positions of power and the accompanying easy life organizational indifference and years of clock-punching bestowed upon them.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Organizational Accountability – Increase Opportunities with Accountability

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StrategyDriven Organizational Accountability PrincipleEvery day, executives and managers are presented with opportunities to enhance their organization’s success. Frequently, these opportunities go unrecognized, unexplored, or unexploited because the organization is not prepared for them. Certainly, some opportunities are beyond an organization’s reach because of resource limitations. However, ensuring the organization possesses key attributes will better enable it to take advantage of those opportunities for which it has the resources and that are consistent and aligned with its mission. These attributes include:

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Organizational Accountability – Evaluating Organizational Culture, part 1

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StrategyDriven Organizational Accountability ArticleWhile it might sound cliche, there exists a significant truth to the phrase, actions speak louder than words. As individuals, we all hold certain values, beliefs, and biases which guide our decisions and subsequently our actions. So strong and yet so unperceivable are these convictions that on a day-to-day basis our reactions and responses to hundreds of seemingly benign situations are defined by them. Therefore, an individual’s values, the beliefs, and biases can be interpreted and understood by observing the individual’s actions.

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Additional Information

Additional information regarding organizational roles, responsibilities, and the propagation of values through performance measures, processes, procedures, and behavioral reinforcement can be found in the StrategyDriven model Strategic Organizational Alignment.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

StrategyDriven Organizational Accountability Forum

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Accountable organizations are unique creatures; standing out from others because of their superior performance, greater employee loyalty, and higher customer satisfaction. Although the rewards are great, many companies will not embark on the journey to accountability because attaining and maintaining high levels of organizational accountability is extremely difficult.

Organizational accountability exists when all members of the workforce individually and collectively act to consequentially promote the timely accomplishment of the organization’s mission. Examined more closely, this means that:

  • all members of the workforce: Includes executives, managers, and individual contributors. Executives and managers are responsible for holding their subordinates accountable for the effective and efficient conduct of activities supporting mission achievement. Subordinates, through their actions, set an example by which positive pressure is applied to their peers and seniors for greater accountability.
  • individually act: Enough individuals throughout the organization must act accountably in order to achieve the critical mass necessary for the existence of an accountable organization. Some individuals, such as the chief executive officer, must exhibit and reinforce accountable behaviors for the organization to be truly accountable.
  • collectively act: Often, groups of executives, managers, or individual contributors make and execute the organization’s decisions. Under these circumstances, it is critical that the group act in accordance with the organization’s values to accomplish its mission and avoid easy outs and the tendency to fall into a mode of group think.
  • consequentially promote: Accountability cannot exist without both positive and negative consequences. To consequentially promote the organization’s mission implies that individuals and groups will not only act in ways that seek to accomplish the mission but will recognize and reward those who do so exceptionally and appropriately act to minimize behaviors less supportive of the organization’s goals.
  • timely accomplishment of the organization’s mission: For accountability to exist, one must know what is to be accomplished and within what time frame. No one can be accountable for accomplishing an undetermined goal for there is no basis against which to measure their accomplishments. Likewise, a goal that is not bound by time can never be considered to be incomplete or have insufficient progress because the individual or group working toward such a goal has an infinite amount of time to reach it.

Focus of the Organizational Accountability Forum

Materials in this forum explore the key attributes of accountable organizations and why many executives and managers intentionally or unconsciously avoid raising their organization’s accountability. We identify the programs, processes, and actions that can be taken to help promote increased accountability. Finally, we’ll examine the many benefits that accompany higher levels of organizational accountability and why accountable organizations realize them while others don’t. The following articles, podcasts, documents, and resources cover those topics critical to establishing a highly accountable organizational culture.

Articles

Principles

Best Practices

Warning Flags

Resources

Books