Category: Leadership

People are always looking for little sayings to make things more memorable and actionable. When thinking about accountability and expectation setting, I’ve come across several little sayings that are useful for entrepreneurs and leaders to remember. Here are three of my favorite accountability sayings:

1. Inspect what you expect
2. What gets measured, gets done
3. Trust, but verify

As an entrepreneur, I’m self-starting and goal-oriented. When defining our core values, I always prioritized other people that are self-starting as I want to be in the business of leading and not micromanaging, whenever possible. Even still, it’s important to define expectations and keep these three accountability sayings in mind.

What else? What are some more accountability sayings that you like?

In Patrick Lencioni’s book The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, he talks about the following:

• Immeasurable – if nothing is measured, then nothing can be improved
• Irrelevant – it’s critical to know who the work affects
• Anonymity – knowing and caring about personal life is important

In a similar manner, there are three questions entrepreneurs should answer for every employee:

• Who’s my boss?
• What’s my job?
• How do I know if I’m doing it well?

It seems simple, but you’d be amazed how many employees can’t answer these three little questions. Why? Many leaders don’t spend the time to build a healthy organization. Great leaders know that everything depends on great team members, and the foundation is the culture of the organization.

What else? Can you answer these three questions for everyone in your company?

One area many entrepreneurs struggle with, especially first-time entrepreneurs, is holding team members accountable. Many entrepreneurs are so focused on whatever it is they do well (e.g. sales, product management, fundraising, etc.) that they naturally neglect the operating side of the business. This can be OK early on but as the startup grows, and the number of people on the team grows, it becomes a real challenge.

A simple exercise is to make a Google Sheet answering the Who, What, Why, and When of accountability:

• Who – Who is responsible for this (the name of the person — make it one person and not multiple people)?
• What – What is it that this person must do?
• Why – Why is this important for the organization?
• When – When is this due (make it a fixed date or a recurring event e.g. these KPIs need to be put in the spreadsheet every Friday by 2pm)?

Much like the Weekly Team Update email, developing basic business processes is critical as the business scales. For entrepreneurs struggling with accountability, implementing a simple system that answers the who, what, why, and when questions can really help.

What else? What are some more thoughts on the who, what, why, and when of accountability?

In the entrepreneurial circles, there’s a well known book called The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber, where he popularized the concept of working on the business as opposed to in the business. Generally, the idea is entrepreneurs often get caught up on the day-to-day running of the business and don’t spend enough time dreaming, planning big goals, and thinking about the future.

Only, it doesn’t make sense to worry about working on the business if there isn’t much of a business to begin with. At the beginning, almost all time should be spent working in the business. Due to limited resources, domain expertise, and many other factors, the entrepreneur is usually the best person to be working in the business. Over time, this changes, and as the business grows and achieves some stability, the entrepreneur does need to consciously allocate more time to working on the business. Here are a few thoughts on working in the business vs on the business:

• Paul Graham has a great essay titled Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule that highlights one of the challenges an entrepreneur goes through from being a doer to a manager (once in the manager state, it’s even more important to work on the business)
• From a company size and scale perspective, when companies meet my simple definition of a successful business, entrepreneurs should be spending at least 10% of their time working on the business
• Overall, the more time spent managing and leading other people, the more time that needs to be spent working on the business

Entrepreneurs would do well to think about the concept of working on the business vs working in the business. Early on, most of the time is spent working in the business. Then, as the business grows, the entrepreneur needs to allocate more time to working on the business instead of in it.

What else? What are some more thoughts on working in the business vs working on the business?

Lululemon, the athletic clothing company, employs a unique strategy with their employees: everyone has their 1,5, and 10 year goals for personal, health, and career on the wall in each store. Interested, I checked this out at Ponce City Market and sure enough, a dozen sheets of paper were on the wall near the fitting rooms, one sheet for each employee. On each paper, there were two paragraphs written by the employee describing themselves followed by SMART goals. This approach — all employees transparently sharing their goals — is amazing for accountability, growth, and alignment.

Before writing out their goals, each employee is asked to create a 10-year personal vision by answering the following questions:

• What will I love?
• What will I have accomplished?
• Who will surround me?

Then, with that vision in place, the next step is to write out goals, in order of necessary accomplishment, to achieve that vision:

• Personal
  • 10 year goals
  • 5 year goals
  • 1 year goals
• Health
  • 10 year goals
  • 5 year goals
  • 1 year goals
• Career
  • 10 year goals
  • 5 year goals
  • 1 year goals

Considering Lululemon started in 1998 and is now worth $7 billion (NASDAQ:LULU), there’s something special about figuring out what motivates people and building an organization that helps them achieve their goals.

What else? What are some more thoughts on Lululemon having all employees create goals and sharing them with everyone else, including customers?

Recently I was talking to an entrepreneur and the topic of what to do next after achieving inbox zero (see Manage Email Like a Boss) came up. His answer was perfect: go straight to the one page strategic plan. For many entrepreneurs, the one pager acts as the highest-level gameplan for the business. If it’s truly the gameplan, it needs to be visited frequently. Only, too many entrepreneurs put a one pager together and then treat it like a static document to be updated once every 90 days. The best entrepreneurs treat it like a living document and use it to align the leadership team on a frequent basis.

Here are a few thoughts on inbox zero and the one page strategic plan:

• Inbox zero comes from reading emails once and processing them (often deleting them or putting them into folders to address later based on priorities), but it also acts as a to do list for many, and once the current to do list is done, the next logical place to go is the one pager
• Quarterly goals and annual goals, while usually fixed for the designated time period, should have a quarter-to-date or year-to-date value so it’s easy to see where things currently stand, as opposed to only having the desired outcome
• Priority projects should be the most frequently reviewed area of the one pager as it has the most important things to accomplish in the next 90 days (or sooner depending on where things are in the quarter), and, like the inbox acting as a pseudo to do list, the priority projects act as a high-level to do list for the company

The next time you hit inbox zero and consider what to do next, go straight to the one page strategic plan.

What else? What are some more thoughts on inbox zero and the one page strategic plan?