It All Starts With “See It”

If you can’t See It, you won’t Own It. If you can’t Own It, you won’t Solve It. If you can’t Solve It, you won’t Do It. Each of the Steps To Accountability builds on the one before it. If you ignore or neglect one or more of the steps, you compromise your effectiveness and your accountability for delivering results.

For over five years, a national fast food franchise company had been trying to increase the number of customers it served during lunch with little success. Armed with the Steps To Accountability—See It, Own It, Solve It, Do It—owner/operators and store managers were determined to break through the glass ceiling of serving an average of 67 cars per store in drive-through lanes at lunch.

First there were a number of things they needed to See and Own: there were too many cars waiting in the lane from noon to one, employees were often unaware of how many cars were in the lane, store managers were failing to prepare employees for peak demand periods, owner/operators were understaffing the stores during lunch, and employees were not acting and thinking like a team to serve drive-through customers better and faster.

Once they were able to See It and Own It—i.e., what was actually happening in the stores from noon to one—they were able to move into an effective Solve It mode. Their mantra became “Own the Lane.” They were able to do this as a company because owner/operators made sure stores were optimally staffed during lunch, store managers huddled with employees fifteen minutes before noon to prep them for peak performance, all the employees were constantly aware of how many cars were in the lane, and everyone worked together to keep the number of cars waiting in the lane down to three or less.

Within weeks some stores were serving more than 80 cars during lunch. After a few months, some stores were serving more than 100 cars during lunch. The stores that diligently applied See It, Own It, Solve It, were able to consistently Do It.

To learn more about the Steps To Accountability and how to create a Culture Of Accountability in your organization, we invite you to join the Accountability Community by visiting www.partnersinleadership.com, where you can review actual client case studies.

See It, Own It, Solve It, Do It, Steps To Accountability, Culture Of Accountability, and Accountability Community are all registered trademarks of Partners In Leadership, Inc.