Who is accountable for the decisions you make? You are of course.

One of the greatest frustrations I see for leaders is the lack of accountability for decisions made. Here are a few examples:

• Escalation: I should say “Needless escalation”. A team member wanting the team leader to take responsibility, when there is ample information, and the decision rights are clearly with the team member.
• Sharing: I should say “Dodging”. When a “committee” decides that often no one is accountable unless there is a non-rotating chair with clearly articulated responsibility.
• Caring: I should say “Not caring”. When a team member takes the easy decision because they have a low care-factor for the outcome.

Unless your teams have clearly defined processes and decision rights, team members will have their own mental model of how their team makes decisions and who is responsible. Whenever I collaborate with teams to map out these processes, I’m always struck by the different perspectives some team members have. Sometimes, they are a mile apart.

A problem I see with the allocation of decision rights is that they are defined too narrowly. Often limited to financial delegations and who can speak to the media, as examples. Another example of an area that can benefit from clarification is the level of stakeholder consultation and who will be consulted. How often do you hear in a meeting, “Did you consult with them on this?”… with the answer being “No” or “Not yet.”

As a C-Suite leader, providing clarity on how decisions of your teams should be made, and by whom and when, creates accountability. Accountability improves quality of decision making and implementation. The care factor goes up!

For a Risk leader, I suggest you encourage teams in your organisation to map and agree their processes and do your best to ensure this includes the management of risk. If teams in your organisation already have mapped their processes and omitted anything to do with their management of risk, there is your opportunity to influence them to create accountability for individual risks as well as the overall process.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.