Accountability Chart Mastery (Part Three of Six). If your community bank, credit union, or non-banking business runs on the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS®) (or even if you don’t), the accountability chart is one of the most powerful tools to getting what you want from your business.

In part one of this series, we talked about what an accountability chart is and why it is important to have one. In part two, we addressed some stories with creating accountability charts. In part three of this series, we start reviewing some building blocks of accountability chart mastery.

Lets Fix This

In the EOS world, building an accountability chart starts with the leadership team. It is based on the premise that there are basically three basic functions in an EOS organization: Sales/Marketing, Operations, Finance. In the EOS world, we add the role of Integrator, a role that integrates the three basic functions, keeping them on track and accountable. In some organizations, there is a Visionary, but many times in smaller organizations, the Visionary and Integrator are combined into a single accountability chart function.

Your organization may have more at the top level than the basic accountability chart explained here. In a community bank or credit union, some of the critical accountabilities at the top is those of a Risk Officer and a Chief Credit Officer and depending on your institution size, you may want those roles on the senior leadership team.

At the senior leadership team level, document the broad, general accountabilities each of the functions would have. For instance, the Sales and Marketing function would have:

• Setting marketing goals and holding the marketing team accountable
• Attracting the right customers to your sales team
• Presenting the right credit or deposit solution to your customers and closing the deal
• Setting sales goals and holding the sales team accountable to those goals
• After the sale service and support

Some organizations may put the customer experience under the sales function, some may put it under the Integrator function. Others may put it under the Operations function. In part 6 of this article, we’ll dive into some specific IT department accountabilities to get your chart going.

If you are working with an EOS Implementer, the accountability chart exercise will take a significant amount of time. If you are self implementing EOS as a senior leadership team, don’t underestimate the time it takes to get the leadership team accountabilities correct. Take the time, discuss each accountability honestly and openly and get it right.

In part four of our series, we address building out the senior leadership team level of your accountability chart.

Resources:

• Download free chapter of the book Traction by Gino Wickman.
• Download a free chapter of the book Rocket Fuel by Mark C. Winters and Gino Wickman
• Contact Us for more information about building out your Accountability Chart and implementing EOS in your organization.

Accountability Chart Mastery (Part Two of Six). If your community bank, credit union, or non-banking business runs on the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS®) (or even if you don’t), the accountability chart is one of the most powerful tools to getting what you want from your business.

In part one of this series, we talked about what an accountability chart is and why it is important to have one. In part two, we address some stories with creating accountability charts.

An Accountability Back Story

While building an accountability chart, one of our clients ran into an issue with some of the service areas of the organization (this was an IT consulting firm). Two members of the senior leadership team ended up with part of the “reactive services” accountabilities. In IT consulting terms, reactive services is the Help Desk and the teams tasked with resolving computer issues as they came up. One leadership team member was over tiers 1 to 3 of the Help Desk and the other leadership team member was over tier 4 of the Help Desk. The staff reported to the proper LT members (org chart), but the accountability seat of “reactive services” was filled by two people.

It took a full six months of discussions and re-structuring to get this accountability back under one person. It was not easy, but everyone on the leadership team recognized the importance of resolving the issue. Now that the accountability is under one-person, reactive service response times are smaller and their clients are much happier.

When two are responsible for a single accountability, nobody is responsible for that accountability.

When Nobody is Accountable

Another situation which seems to keep coming up in many community banks and credit unions is that there are business functions which seem to get done, but that function is not documented and the senior leadership team either doesn’t realize the accountability exists or assumes it just naturally happens.

We see this most often with Customer Service and the Customer Experience. Customer service is part of the customer experience, so customer experience is something which needs to have a seat accountable for this critical business function. I could go on and on about what customer experience is, but for the purposes of this article, let’s say it is the experience your customer has with your organization from the marketing materials to your call center. Customer experience encompasses everything your customer sees, feels and experiences. If this critical area is not intentionally managed from an accountability standpoint, your customer experience will vary based on who or what the client is interacting with at that moment.

In part three of this series, we’ll talk about some of the building blocks of an accountability chart.

Resources:

• For more information about building a world-class customer service organization, read The Customer Service Revolution by John R. DiJulius.
• Download Gino Wickman’s free book called Decide.
• Contact Us for more information about building out the Accountability Chart for your community bank or credit union – we are here to help!