Core Management Principle 1 – 3W Accountability

Date: 20 August 2013
Category: Core Management Principles
Tags: 3W Accountability

Welcome to our series of blogs looking at the Core Management Principles.  The first of which covers what I call 3W Accountability

“The price of greatness is responsibility”

– Winston Churchill.

I like this quote, not because of the words that are in it but because of the words that are not in it. Churchill did not say the price of greatness is intellect or hard work or turning up to work on time or being a nice guy. It’s about taking responsibility. When I was 25 years old I was asked to take over and turn around a software company that was doing badly. I was terrified. Nearly everybody in the company was older than I was. My first major action was to gather all the key executives together. These days we would call it a “strategic planning” session. But back then I just called it a “what the hell am I going to do?” session.

I found the executives had plenty of knowledge in their own areas and we came up with some excellent ideas that we made into a plan. We needed to formulate those ideas into actions and everyone needed to play their part.

How do we make people accountable?

The answer is by using a process that is very simple. It’s called the 3 Ws. Each time you define an action, attach the 3 Ws to it – What, Who and When. Pretty simple, isn’t it? What is the action? Who is responsible for completing that action? When will the action be completed? The group defines the What and the Who and the Who defines the When. You as the CEO set an expectation that one of two things will happen by the When. One, the action will be complete; or two, if the person cannot complete the action by the deadline, they come back to group and ask for an extension, prior to the deadline.

So, we come back together for the next meeting and go through the actions we agreed on last time. Most people have completed their actions. But one person hasn’t. What happens next is critical. I stop the meeting. I say in a quiet but firm voice, “That is not an acceptable answer. That answer has disrespected this group. We made an agreement a week ago that one of two things was going to happen by the When. It’s not acceptable.” Suddenly the room is deathly silent. Everyone will anxious to complete action items next time. And you can be sure that ten minutes before your next meeting you’ll have a flood of people coming to your office and asking for an extension.

And that’s ok. Because what you’ve now learnt is who in your business is overwhelmed, who in your business is not able to meet deadlines, who in your business is taking you for a ride, and those who are the valid contributors in your business who will help dig us out of this hole. And believe me, those things are really handy to know. I did turn that company around and I’ve used the 3Ws technique for every turnaround that I’ve done since. It works.

Now that you have got your people to be accountable, how about knowing which of the actions will have the most impact on your business.  Come back next time to find out when we look at Sensitivity Analysis.

The next in the series of Core Management Principles looks at an introduction to Fiscal Focus.

Want to know more about the 3Ws or any of our other tools, just contact us – it’s easy!