Turning Key Expectations Into Roadmaps

The 72-year-old founder and CEO of a $50 million snack food company was in the process of turning over the leadership reins to his three children, each of whom had worked in the family business since high school. His eldest son assumed the new role of President and COO, his only daughter became CFO, and his second son took over sales and marketing. The founder and father felt his children were ready to run the business, even though they, at times, expressed reservations about not knowing how their father balanced competing priorities and made crucial decisions. His response was always something like, “We’ve been elbow to elbow in this business for years; you guys know how things work around here.” As you might suspect, when the founder and his wife left for an extended three-month vacation in Tuscany, several major problems arose that ended up wreaking havoc in the family business. When the founder and father returned, he couldn’t stop saying, “How did that happen?”

After telling us the whole story at The Oz Principle Accountability Training public workshop, the President and COO made two comments and asked a penetrating question: “My father is much more unconsciously competent than he realizes. And right now, he’s micromanaging us to death. How do we get him to capture what he’s learned over the past 50 years so we can systematically apply it throughout the business?”

We spent the next several minutes talking about how this new President and COO could apply the Accountability Sequence to capture each of his father’s key expectations for the business. Here’s what we advised: “First, clearly FORM each of his key expectations, making them frameable in a strategic and operational context, obtainable given organizational constraints and resources, easily repeatable throughout the organization, and readily measureable on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Second, make sure he clearly COMMUNICATEs the Why-What-When of each expectation, with particular emphasis on the why. Third, get ALIGNed on each of the key expectations by thoroughly discussing what alignment really looks like and means on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being full and complete alignment). And, fourth, agree on an approach for INSPECTion, because progress toward meeting key expectations must always be inspected regularly. If you agree on an approach to inspection, it won’t feel like micromanagement.”

A few weeks later, we received a call from the President and COO thanking us for the workshop and our advice. He told us that the Accountability Sequence model we had shared was not only helping them capture their father’s unconscious competencies, but also strengthening their new management team. We made arrangements to continue the Accountability Conversation we had started. Key expectations—when properly formed, communicated, aligned, and inspected—can provide an invaluable road map for achieving the results you want and need to deliver.

For more information on turning key expectations into roadmaps, please join the Accountability Community by visiting  www.partnersinleadership.com

The Oz Principle, Accountability Training, Why-What-When, and Accountability Conversation are all registered trademarks of Partners In Leadership Inc.