Accountability
BHAG = BS. If you’re not sure what those acronyms mean, let me help you out. BHAG, stands for Big Hairy Arse Goal. Okay, one of those words may or may not be spelled incorrectly. And BS, well that’s just good old fashioned Bull $#!T!
I love the concept of the BHAG. We’ve got to shoot for the stars to land on the moon. Heard that one before, and honestly, I do love it. As long as reaching the moon is actually flippin’ possible! And that’s the rub. Many times goals are so far out of someone’s reach that they just end up demotivating people. Goals that are unattainable do not instill a sense of hope in the team. And hope is critical to creating a performance culture. People must believe.
I believe that everyone wants to know exactly what they are accountable for. They want complete transparency in accountability metrics. They want to believe the goals are achievable because in their center all people want to achieve goals, to experience the success of a job well done. Everyone wants to win.
To create a performance culture people need to know how their individual performance fits into the team’s performance. How do the individual accountability metrics fit into the team’s metrics and how do those feed into the organizational accountability metrics? In short, people need to understand how their individual performance helps the company succeed.
In order to create a performance culture the concept of performing, of outcome achievement, of pursuing excellence, needs to be a regular part of the discussion. This means that the team’s performance and the organization’s performance as related to the accountability metrics must be part of every meeting. Not to create an oppressive environment of “live the numbers or else”, but one of awareness and action. The other half of the meeting? Well, that needs to be qualitative. See my blog on Training HERE. That’s the action part. It’s not just all numbers. The correct balance in every meeting is 50% quantitative and 50% qualitative. A performance culture requires this equilibrium in every meeting, every time.
