Coach Pete discusses how to create a stronger culture of accountability in your family business.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Accountability is an issue for many family businesses. What I’ve found is that the business many times errs to the side of letting people slide a little bit on their results, because they’ve been loyal, they’ve been with us a long time, and they know the insides and outs of our business.
Here at Walsh Brothers, we had a guy that’d been with us 60 years. Think about that. Very commonly, people are with us 30, 40 years. Loyalty, tenure, knowing the business is great, but in case you look around, it’s becoming a super competitive world, so you’ve got to be able to take those other qualities, and add the culture of accountability to it or your family business is going to follow in the footsteps of the dinosaurs, quite honestly. And we know what happened to them.
The business results you’ll create with this deliberate practice are; an assessment of your family business’s accountability culture, identify potential obstacles to higher accountability, identify two to three new practices you can take on to improve the culture of accountability. Here’s the steps. On a scale of A to F, like a school scale, how do you rate your business’s culture of accountability? What do you see as the obstacles to higher accountability? And what are two to three specific new attitudes and actions you can take to move your culture of accountability up a grade or two? Identify the people who need to be on board to move the needle. And lastly, schedule a meeting to discuss, create buy-in, and move forward with action.
Every great long-lasting company has a strong culture of accountability. And the thing is, when you create a stronger culture of accountability, you’ll actually attract and keep the best performers. That’s the funny thing about it. Now, look, getting your culture of accountability to grow and to get higher takes time. You’re going to have to be patient. But I’ll tell you this. It really does take a genuine buy-in from the people leading the organization. So you really have to make sure that everybody sitting at the leadership table, everybody at the executive table, really buys in to this culture of accountability.
As always, lean on me some for some free coaching with an email with any questions about how you’re making this transition. And please, invite your other family members to join us in these deliberate practices. Coach me on ideas of how I can even be of greater support to you, and lastly keep practicing daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, over your entire career. That’s how you become excellent and get to the hall of fame.
Now, get out of here, go practice, and play to your potential.
