A story about accountability and delegation

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think Doxa Talent is the way to go.

Here's why.

They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them.

I have.

Talk to docs of talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatalent.com Bill G Again, that's doxatalent.com Bill G. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today.

So I have an old friend with a great business here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Great fun business. And he wanted to start to transition out of his role as the hands on CEO, operator, everything in the business and begin a kind of a semi retirement or stepping back from the business. So he'd hired a really capable person, a person who clearly had the experience and who could get the job done and who had the right kind of presence and yet things weren't going well. And he asked me if I wouldn't mind coming in and doing a little workshop with the team and helping them kind of see, level up what the gap was and why this person like what privately he told me the person wasn't working out and asked me if I could help with that. So I came in and I said hey, we're going to do some scaling up stuff and that kind of thing. They were all open and excited for it. And one of the tools that we used right out of the box was this thing called the Functional Accountability Chart exercise or the face tool in our world. You could find it on the Internets or on our website, that kind of thing. But we'll probably attach a link to one of them here anyway. So we go through this exercise and we're looking for who's accountable of different functions in the company, the common functions that every company needs. So sales, operations, research and development, the human resources, the talent development, the, the money, reporting the money, the movement of money, all these kinds of things that are necessary for the common functions for all companies. And we started laying them out like who's ultimately accountable for each of these things. And what we discovered is that the new COO's name was in almost all of them and the other people around the room were helpers. So they weren't, they worked on certain aspects of that. But the ultimate accountability all lived with this new person. And that person, she was exhausted and she wasn't able to get it all done. And things were struggling and she was struggling, and things were still coming back then to the founding CEO. So the first shift that we had to do is to start to get other people instead of just being helpful. The company's about 70, 70, 75 employees at the time started to get some of that accountability pushed out. So they don't have helpers, they have actually people accountable for sales, for service, for operations, that kind of thing. And that work is now pushed out into the company. Those people start to step up. Then of course, we looked at common processes and the handoffs between functional roles, that kind of thing. But the first thing is getting your name or one person's name out of so many of those different functions in the company. And the next thing to do is getting clear about who actually owns it. So we don't want two people who own service or two people who own operations or three or whatever. We want to have one clear leader, even if multiple people contribute to a thing. So clear accountability so that the whole team knows who's accountable for what. And we have people actually like holding up their end of the business, their function within the company. And it's not all being carried by one person. Person who's maybe not even suited to all those different roles. Right.

So.

And then the next thing that we did is go to work on values in action. So trying to change the leadership style. Instead of solving problems for everyone, we want to get the leader teaching the team to think from the company values. The company values are like four or five, four to six things that describe the company doing its work at its best. And if you're thinking from values and applying them to the challenges and the situation of the day, then you don't need a policy for everything. People can start to work out some of the things on their own. And as you scale and grow and go through many rapid changes in the business operation, people can apply those values to these new situations and challenges, thinking for themselves, being fully accountable for their roles. And you can stop working so hard, Everybody can work together better, pulling equally on the weight of growing the business. It transformed that company. I hope that's helpful for you. I hope you can apply that some way to your business. What's the one job you want to be left with? What's the jobs you need to get rid of first? Where do you need to bring clarity to what people have got and how could you teach them to do more of their own thinking on their own? We'll talk to you again next time. Until then, keep Scaling Are you ready.

To turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software powered by Align, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday. Com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday. Com Bill G that's aligntoday. Com BillG Check it out and try it now.