Coaching for Leaders

475: What to Hold People Accountable For, with Stacey Barr

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Stacey Barr: Practical Performance Measurement

Stacey Barr is a specialist in strategic performance measurement and evidence-based leadership. She is the creator of PuMP®, a performance measurement methodology that routinely transforms measurement cynics into its greatest advocates.

Stacey is also the author of two books, Practical Performance Measurement: Using the PuMP® Blueprint for Fast, Easy, and Engaging KPIs, and Prove It!: How to Create a High Performance Culture and Measurable Success.

In the conversation, Stacey and I explore the struggles of holding people accountable for quantitative results, including behaviors that often lead to unintended consequences. Instead, she invites leaders to hold people accountable for monitoring, interpretation, and action.

Key Points

Holding people accountable for quantitative results tends to lead employees to:

  • Choosing measures of what they are already good at
  • Choosing easy targets
  • Manipulating the numbers to make the measures look good
  • Having lots of excuses for why targets are missed

    • Our typical definition of accountability drives the wrong behavior.

    Instead, hold people accountable for:

    1. Monitoring the important results: when someone is responsible for a specific business result, like problem resolution or accuracy of advice or eliminating rework, they can be accountable for routinely monitoring that result with a performance measure.
    2. Interpreting their measures: when someone is responsible for monitoring a performance measure, they can be accountable for interpreting what that measure is telling them about the business result it measures.
    3. Initiating action when action is required: when someone is responsible for interpreting a performance measure, they can be accountable for deciding what kind of action is needed, if at all.
      4. Resources Mentioned
      • Download a free copy of Stacey’s book, Practical Performance Measurement
      • What is a KPI Owner Accountable For? by Stacey Barr
      • Measure For Collaboration, Not Competition by Stacey Barr
      • Case Study: Reducing Administrative Waste With a Single Powerful Performance Measure by Stacey Barr
      • Reach out to Stacey with questions at [email protected]
        • Book Notes

        Download my highlights from Practical Performance Measurement in PDF format (free membership required).

        Related Episodes
        • Effective Delegation of Authority, with Hassan Osman (episode 413)
        • Performance Measurement That Gets Results, with Stacey Barr (episode 419)
        • How to Balance Care and Accountability When Leading Virtually, with Jonathan Raymond (episode 464)
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