Webinar: Holding Employees Accountable in Remote Work Environments

Ryan Villanueva | Senior Growth Consultant, Crews & co.

Ryan Villanueva is a senior consultant and partner at Crews & co., specializing in guiding private equity-backed companies through structured growth. As engagement manager for clients with annual revenues between $20M and $200M, Ryan brings deep expertise in Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), helping leadership teams align on strategy and drive measurable results. He combines financial acumen from his experience as an analyst at Goldman Sachs with entrepreneurial insight gained from founding and operating his own company, Best Delegate. A graduate of Yale University with additional Executive Education from Harvard Business School, Ryan has also served as president of the Boston Chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization, making him a well-rounded advisor to portfolio companies seeking high-impact growth strategies.

 

 

Ryan Villanueva (00:00:00):

Hello everyone and welcome to today’s webinar, brought to you by Crews & co., and Commonwealth Payroll & HR. I’m your host today, Ryan Villanueva from Crews & co., and I’m accompanied by my good friend and co-host Jeff Plakans. Jeff, hello, how are you?

Jeff Plakans (00:00:20):

Hey, thanks Ryan. Appreciate it. Appreciate the ability for us to do this together. In case it wasn’t obvious, Commonwealth has been working with Crews & co. for a long, long time now the last couple years. And during that time on this particular topic, holding employees accountable, specifically remote employees. But we found that as a company pre-pandemic, we were at about 0% remote employees. We’re now up to about 40% remote employees. It’s through the work that we’ve done with Ryan and with Crews & co. that we’ve been able to master the concepts around this.

(00:01:07):

And so what we’re going to learn today, why is it important? Well, it’s important because we talk to a lot of different employers who have this same challenge. They’re finding difficulty in how to determine how productive their employees are, specifically the ones that are remote. But really this applies to all employees and they’re looking for tools that are not surveillance equipment to make sure that folks are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. So that’s what we’re going to cover today.

(00:01:43):

What we’ve found with a lot of organizations is that they require three things. There’s three different levels, if you will. We help the first level of course, with compliance, and then once a company’s mastered compliance with regard to their employees, then they can move on to the next step, which is best practices and processes and those things all together allow them to create the great buzzword of all that everybody focuses on, which is culture. But you can’t have good culture unless you have all these other things in place.

(00:02:18):

Ryan is going to help us with that and with the tools of covering this best practices and processes that lead to culture. So thanks for sharing your lunch hour with us. Thanks for giving us the time. And with that, Ryan, take the lead, please.

Ryan Villanueva (00:02:36):

I appreciate that, Jeff, and I know I got the mic here. This is not going to be a co-hosted podcast. Okay. We’re going to make this fun and interactive for everybody. So on your screens, you should see this link pop up. I’m using Menti, so menti.com. We got the code. If you’re on your phone, but looking at a screen, you can use a QR code and Nicolette is going to post this into the chat. Actually, I’m going to post this into the chat. Okay, it’s in the chat.

(00:03:09):

So if you’re on your screen, because throughout this presentation, yes, I’m going to be covering tools that you can use to hold employees accountable and create accountability in remote and hybrid work environments. But I want to make sure you get in on the fund on of that. So if you’re in the link, and if you’re in Mentimeter, then you should actually see my screen move to the next one. I see a few clients on the call. So you know that at Crews we like to start off our meetings with a one word open. Obviously we’re in webinar mode now, so if you’re on the screen, you can see One Word Open.

(00:03:45):

I see Julie did not get the link, so I’m going to recopy this link and post it into the chat. And attendees, everyone. Here we go. Thank you, Julie. So that link should be posted in the chat. You can pull up this Mentimeter. And when you’re on, go ahead and put in your one word. That’s just our exercise for saying, “Hey, what’s one word that’s on your mind?” How you’re feeling? Don’t think too hard about it. And just post it in. Here we go, Grateful, learn, energy, excited. Okay. It’s a big word, cloud. So obviously I can see how many people are getting excited, which is great. Hopeful. Ooh, strategy. We will talk about strategy. Intrigued. I’m glad to hear intrigue. Great. Okay, cool. Thank you for all these responses. Motivated, interested, okay, and excited.

(00:04:38):

And so I can see the responses in the bottom right. I can even see how many thumbs up. We’re getting some plus ones here. So this is great. One word open, I’m glad to hear the energy is in the room. You’re excited to learn some strategies for how to hold employees accountable and create alignment in remote and hybrid working environments. So that’s the first question, was the one word open. And I’m going to ask you another question, but I wanted to kick off this presentation by sharing this, that our mission at Crews is helping companies grow. And we believe that there are different stages to growth.

(00:05:18):

So if you think about your company, where you are in terms of revenue size, you can probably see these revenue ranges here at the top. If you think about how many people you have at your company, how many employees or workers, and in small techs, how you’re organized. So this chart represents different stages of growth for small businesses all the way up to 125 million in revenue and in-between, you’ll notice the red bar, the danger zone. And what this chart is saying is that wherever you are, and I hope you can find your company in this chart, where it currently is, if you want to get to the next stage, there are certain challenges that you need to overcome, otherwise you fall into that danger zone. And we will be talking about how to overcome those challenges and specific to remote and hybrid working environments.

(00:06:10):

But I want to make sure that this whole thing is cast with an eye towards thinking, how are we helping our business grow, right? I’m thinking revenue, I’m thinking profit, I’m thinking valuation. And we’re going to do that. We’re going to create that result by creating a culture of accountability, alignment, and ultimately more trust on our teams, even in remote and hybrid working environments. And so this is the challenge slide. This is a slide that we showed to all of our clients. And my next question to you in the Mentimeter is what is your biggest challenge when it comes to managing remote teams? So on screen, you should see a range of options. I’m sure there are more things that you could come up with. I just wanted to throw throughout these eight.

(00:06:53):

And go ahead, pick as many as you want in terms of what are the challenges that you’re facing, or at least pick the biggest challenge that you’re facing when it comes to managing remote teams. And I’m curious what comes up across the group. I love seeing the bars move. It’s like a little race or something. Race to the top. All right, I see seven responses. You can see what’s coming up. We’ve got the most responses around monitoring what teams are working on. So for sure, I thought that would be a key challenge in the top spot. Wait a minute, now we have a tie for lack of trust. Okay, they’re neck and neck. Monitoring what teams are working on and lack of trust. That’s an interesting and very deep-rooted one.

(00:07:46):

Okay, tied again. In the second place is going to be, it is challenging to give and receive feedback in remote and hybrid environments. So we’re going to talk about that and I hope everyone on this call can appreciate that feedback is important to growing as an individual professional, but as a company. But when you’re a remote environment, how do you make sure that feedback happens? That’s definitely a challenge. This one, “Processes are hard to find and not followed.” So I learned this actually from Jeff, from you and from a speaker that you brought in, the scavenger hunt. There’s the scavenger hunt for our processes and just information that we’re searching within our companies. That’s hard enough-

Jeff Plakans (00:08:30):

You should probably give kudos just in case he’s listening to Nick Sonnenberg.

Ryan Villanueva (00:08:33):

Fair enough, yep. I got his book on a thing.

Jeff Plakans (00:08:36):

Wrote a book called Come Up for Air, always recommended.

Ryan Villanueva (00:08:42):

You brought it up, Jeff, yes. So this book, if you’re having trouble say creating documentation, organizing it, make sure everybody can find it, then this is actually a really great book for doing that. So we’ll refer back to this later in presentation. You can see on screen the challenges that are coming up, lack of trust and monitoring what teams are working on are tied, right? And so the monitoring what teams are working on, right? Jeff was making a joke about we’re not trying to create surveillance. And quite literally, yeah, you don’t want to be watching every single movement of remote employees.

(00:09:17):

But the root issue behind this one is, well, what are they supposed to be working on? What are their priorities in any given day or week and their focus? And most importantly, how do you know that they’re getting the intended result of what they’re supposed to be working on? So I’m going to be hitting that first. The lack of trust is a pretty deep one. So we’ll also hit that and we will talk about feedback and processes being hard to find and not followed.

(00:09:41):

So this is a range of challenges. You can see that every single one has been hit. And if this is the challenge, then the last question I have for you before I really get into our content today is we’re trying to create accountability. If we solve these challenges, then we should see accountability on our teams. And the open-ended question I have for all of you, and I know some of you are eating lunch while you’re doing this. So I’m looking for a sentence, three to five words is fine, but let’s define accountability.

(00:10:11):

If that’s what we’re looking for out of the next 30 minutes or so, then how do you define accountability in your organizations, in your companies and your teams? I’m curious. Give me three to seven words, “Owning and fixing problems.” I love that ownership for sure. “People do what they say they’re going to do and what they’re expected to do.” “Meeting deadlines, hitting those deadlines.” “Getting stuff done when you’re supposed to.” “Being able to provide the receipts of work that was done.” That’s an interesting one. The “receipts” in quotes. I’m thinking results, numbers or just in classroom education, we would’ve called this exit ticket. What’s your exit ticket?

(00:10:55):

“Delivering results.” “Ensuring people do what they agreed to.” “Completing tasks timely,” and, “Having a clear understanding first of what is required and expected, and then take action.” So that’s a great one. I can tell from some of the responses who’s been through Crews & co. growth tools and are providing some of the methods that we talk about there. “Measurement for doing your job.” “High follow through.” This is great. Great. What I’m really seeing on this screen is alignment actually on this group around what accountability means.

(00:11:28):

We can see some obvious themes about doing what you’re saying you’re going to do, but then also the output, the outcomes of those things. The receipts, making sure that results are being delivered, that we’re hitting those deadlines. So there’s a bit of input like, “I’m going to do this and I’m owning it.” That’s accountability. And there’s also the output, the results, like, “I did it, what I said I was going to do, but is it actually getting the real job done and being responsible for it?” So this is great. I think we’re aligned on this group for accountability.

(00:12:00):

And what I really wanted to start off with this presentation is one thought leader business authors definition of accountability, which is Patrick Lencioni who wrote this book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. This is another great list of recommended reading. And he makes this claim in the book that accountability is the willingness of team members to be able to call out other team members when those members are doing things, exhibiting behavior or taking actions that might actually hurt the team.

(00:12:33):

Again, it’s the willingness of a team member to be able to say to another team member like, “Hey, you’re not doing the thing that is right. It might actually hurt the team.” And this is really important. It’s part of a broader framework. It’s one of the dysfunctions, it’s the avoidance of accountability. And what that happens, what we see on teams that avoid accountability is it creates resentment because then we’re not calling people out.

(00:12:57):

It lowers standards of performance and encourages mediocrity. We see people missing deadlines and deliverables and it actually puts this burden on the team leader as the source of discipline and calling people out. You might call this mental load. And so this is a dysfunction for a team that avoids accountability. And I’m curious if you read those bullets, if this resonates with teams that you’re on or have been on actually.

(00:13:27):

In contrast, a team that actually has accountability, they ensure that the poor performers are just people that have room for improvement, that there is a pressure to improve. We’re not trying to make anybody feel bad, but we do need a forcing function. We need some pressure in order to create growth and improvement. Teams with accountability can identify those problems quickly. They’re able to openly and honestly and genuinely just question, pose questions to the group without hesitation because they have that degree of accountability and underlying it, the trust. And there’s respect among team members because we’re being held to high standards, we’re creating accountability. We want that to lead to results. It needs to create high standards.

(00:14:09):

And here’s the other thing, it avoids excessive bureaucracy around performance management and corrective action. So I’ve definitely been on teams where it’s like, “Yeah, I could give that person feedback, but it’ll come up in the performance review. It’ll come up in 360 reviews.” And that is, I think bad for culture. People start avoiding accountability and results. So we have the… I’m trying to paint for you a vision of what it looks like for a team that is totally lacking accountability and a team that is actually demonstrating accountability.

(00:14:44):

And I wanted to kick this off and start going into some of the actual tools that we use at Crews and that I know that Commonwealth Payroll & HR uses from having worked with Jeff and his leadership team over the last three years. And also tools that I use in my own small business that I started before joining Crews, which runs summer camps. I run a completely remote company with employees all over the country actually, and then we just get together for summer camps every summer, and these are the tools that we use.

(00:15:19):

So I know from my experience as a consultant in Crews to being the consultant to Commonwealth and in my own business, that these are practical and tactical for remote and hybrid team management. So I wanted to start off with first the most practical tools that I think you can take away from this presentation. And then I’m going to get into the more strategic and bigger thinking stuff. But here are three tools that I think you could immediately get out of this presentation and implement tomorrow if you wanted to. And if you’re a Crews client, you might be familiar with some of these tools, but for most, I think will actually be refreshing to hear.

(00:15:53):

And what I think are the most practical and tactical tools for creating that accountability for remote employees actually starts with scorecards. So I’ll bring them an example of scorecards, but I’m looking for key metrics that measure activity, the inputs, the things we said were going to do and the results, the outcomes. We have scorecards as a tool. I’ll bring those up and if we have that tool, we need to look at it every week. And the second tool I’m going to bring up is what’s called an on-track meeting. If I have numbers on a scorecard that I want to be on track, I need to look at them every week. And if anything’s off track, then we should have an open conversation about how to get it back on track as a team.

(00:16:35):

And then the third tool that really helps with scorecards is actually having checklists. If you’re a manager managing front-line employees remotely and there are things that you just need them to be able to do at a certain level of quality and consistency, then we need a process, we need a checklist for them to follow, and those things should be measurable and we end up seeing those things on the scorecard. So these are the top three practical and tactical tools that I wanted to share. Here’s some examples of those things.

(00:17:05):

So for a scorecard, here’s a simple scorecard where you can see here there are five different measurables or metrics between sales team meetings, SQLs, so leads, logos, so new clients being won, and they’re all owned by this one person, Rebecca. There’s a fourth measurable on utilization rate. So this is a professional services company and then Steve, who’s their head of finance, their job is to speak with investors. So we got five different measurables and there’s a goal every single week that we’re trying to hit, everything is measured.

(00:17:40):

Just starting with the top one sales team meetings with target accounts. I’m sure everyone here is either actually managing a sales team, on a sales team or works with the sales. And what do sales teams need to do? They need outreaches, they need touches, they need to get appointments and meetings. The goal for Rebecca for their team is one, that’s the goal every week. And you can see here in week January 6th, they got zero and that’s a red, that’s a miss. Next week also a miss, not looking good. But then January 20, finally we hit one and it keeps going up after that. So now that’s a green, that’s a hit.

(00:18:18):

And that’s true for all these other metrics. When the number, the goal for that metric is hit, it’s a green. When it’s a miss, it’s a red. And you do that for every single metric. And when you look at this, this is a very basic scorecard, and I’m using that term scorecard specifically. It comes from golf. If these were the 18 holes of a round of golf, we want to know what the score is, what the par is for every single hole.

(00:18:44):

For us, it’s metrics that we’re trying to hit every single week. It’s a red or a green. And I hope when you look at this as a very simple tool, admittedly, this is very simple. But it makes it clear what the hits and the misses are. It starts to indicate what are the results we’re going for. And if you look at it too, the way that I wrote the scorecard is the meetings are the inputs, they’re behaviors.

(00:19:08):

We’re saying we’re going to make at least one meeting a week, but the real output is like are we winning new customers in the third line, new logos? And their goal is to get to three on a 30-day trailing basis. So basically three new customers a month, and Rebecca is missing that until the middle of the quarter when we’re finally hitting three, four, five and more. And so a scorecard as a very simple tool, which you can create in a spreadsheet, can track the behaviors that you want to see as well as the outputs that you want to get to.

(00:19:39):

And so this is a simple example. I got more examples if people aren’t interested. But with teams, whatever department you are managing, team you are leading sales, marketing, operations, finance, administration. Surely in your part of the business there are key metrics that should be measured. And my question to you in this presentation is like, what are those metrics? Do you know what they are? Do you know who owns them, this is what creates that accountability and what the goal is every single week? And it’s done in a spreadsheet.

(00:20:11):

So whether you’re in-person or hybrid or remote, you all have access to spreadsheets. And what will happen when you’re using this tool and reviewing this, and this is how we create that accountability, is you’ll learn things as a team that we might actually have the wrong metrics, but we can figure that out as a team to figure out the right metrics. There are issues that will just come up, changes in the market or just outliers. We’re running out of capacity to actually hit the goals we set.

(00:20:41):

The real issue though, when it comes to accountability is we may not actually have the right person in that seat. And how do you know you have that? When that person owns a metric that is red every single week, that is data that you and the team need to be able to see. And then it just leads to what is the action that you want to take to help that person actually get to a better level of performance or to take action. But whatever the root causes of the reds drives the next steps for fixing it. And this what helps create accountability.

(00:21:16):

This tool is called the Scorecard, and it’s intended to be reviewed every single week as part of… If you manage a team and you have a weekly team meeting, an all-hands meeting or team meeting, what we prescribe to clients is what we call an on-track meeting. And it’s a very deliberate on-track because in this agenda, which you can read here, at the very top of the agenda is to just read out the Scorecard. And for every line to literally read out was it a hit or a miss that week?

(00:21:46):

If it’s a hit, it’s on track. That’s the point of the meeting. If it’s a miss, then drop the misses. Anything that’s off track, just build a list of all the things that are off track and spend most of the time in the meeting fixing those items. You can see here in this agenda, it’s 90 minutes total. You may have only 60 minutes in your meeting, but the point of it is that two-thirds of that meeting time should be focused on solving the biggest challenges that are blocking your Scorecard. And later on, your goals, your objectives. What makes effective meetings is solving problems. And so we’ve got to set up meetings in a way that are designed and I think over-weighted to solve for those problems. So I can also share with you an example if you want of that. And that’s the on-track meeting.

(00:22:36):

And what you’ll find is that we’ve got the Scorecard, we’ve got the on-track meeting, but for this particular team and the team member, how do we know that this person is doing their job? The answer to that question is we need to actually define what is their core process in their job and put it in the form of a checklist. So this is the third tool I wanted to share with you, which is called an 80/20 checklist.

(00:23:01):

If you’re a manager of a team, surely probably put together a documentation for onboarding your team members and like, “Here are the things that you need to do.” And you’re probably familiar with the term SOPs, Standard Operating Procedure. I’m not talking about that. That is way more intense than what we’re talking about. I’m charging you actually to take that process and see if you can put it into a list of steps, in this case, it’s like 15 different things to check off in order to make it happen.

(00:23:28):

So this is a real example for my own business of like, “Hey, when we launch a new product, launch a summer camp, here are the five things that we need to do in order to get it ready for promotion between target market, create the marketing plan, update the website, create the content calendar and the content with it and then promote it.” And my marketing team goes through these steps whenever we go to launch a new summer camp or a new product.

(00:23:55):

And we do this at my company across all of our different departments and the core processes. So not every single process, just the most important ones. And that’s the term that 80/20. 20% of the inputs accounts for 80% of the results, and that’s an economic principle. We document, we figured out what are our core processes across every department and just put together this 10 to 15 step checklist for every single one and then just combined it all. And this was before ChatGPT. So today I probably could use generative AI to speed along a lot of this, but we created this process documentation.

(00:24:36):

And then a key thing that we have accrued is this has been extremely helpful for I think all of my clients, is how do you get teams to actually adopt those processes? We have a checklist for that because that itself is a process. You want to make sure they’re documented, that they’re easy to find, that whoever owns them is clear, who owns that process, that people actually trained in it. Sometimes you need to communicate it seven times and that you tie it into your scorecards, right? There’s an output to that checklist or something on that checklist that’s measurable that we should see on the Scorecard.

(00:25:12):

We’re going to send out these slides. I know there’s a lot of content on this. I got a lot of examples behind this, but again, I don’t want to be the only one in on the fun on this. So my question for you in the Mentimeter, I wanted to know on this call, there’s 30 people on this call now. Some of you are clients, so now I’m like, “Okay, did we implement the thing?” I’m curious on a scale from one to five of how you would rate your company on these things.

(00:25:41):

Do you have a scorecard or some report or dashboard? And think about the team that you specifically manage for your team that you’re managing, presumably a remote or hybrid team. Do you have something that tells you what are the most important metrics? Are you doing weekly team meetings to make sure those things are on track? Do you have core processes documented at the super high level, the 80/20 level? And are your people, your team actually trained in those processes and actually following them? I was curious about that.

(00:26:14):

Interesting. All right, now it’s starting looking more like a horse race, which one is going to get the highest score? So thank you for whoever gave the thumbs up. Oh, this is like a neck and neck race here. Okay, so you can see we’re averaging at a three-something for all of them, but what’s more interesting is in Mentimeter you can see the range, right? Some of you’re at the top, there’s somebody here who gave it a five. So that’s awesome if you have a scorecard for your team.

(00:27:03):

And then I’m seeing a few on the ones. So it sounds like for some of you you’re actually lacking. If you’re completely lacking some sort of reporting tool to measure metrics on your team, then Scorecard is definitely tool number one to implement. Same thing over here. So more people on this call have some sort of weekly meeting it looks like. So I’m seeing a five on the fives and four in the middle. But there are a handful of you that it sounds like you either don’t have the weekly meetings or you’re not reviewing those metrics. So this is another key one that would help create accountability on your teams.

(00:27:38):

Processes, wow this is an even threes across the board. I think a range arranging people need help on this one. It’s the easy to find part that I think is the harder part here and then people being actually trained and following them. So notably on this one, there are no fives on this list, but the handful of you that gave it a four, so you probably feel good about your processes, probably trained, but do you know that they’re being followed? And I’m going to guess that that’s why there’s no fives here.

(00:28:06):

So thanks for responding to this. I hope it’s interesting also to you to see the data and let it pop out. Those were three tools that I thought were going to be tactical and practical. And again, we’re sending out these slides and I’ve got a bunch of examples to dive deeper into, if you want. Those three tools were targeted to the people on this call who are managers of a remote team or hybrid team. You have one team effectively that you’re managing. I want to move to the next set of tools to share. And this one is more structural and strategic.

(00:28:43):

So I know there are people on this call that are on the senior leadership teams of your companies or executive leadership teams of your companies. Where you’re not just responsible for a single team, you’re responsible for the direction of the company, the bigger picture of the company. And I’m going to share with you the following tools that are for sure the solutions to those challenges. They take more time to implement, but I hope when you see them, you’ll immediately get it and it’s something that you can work on implementing.

(00:29:14):

And the things that I have here that are the really big ideas for how you really drive strategy and create that accountability as senior level starts with role mapping. So really mapping out the organization, not just the org chart. And I’ll show you why. Making sure that everyone is the right person in the right seat on that role map, there will definitely be gaps. Making sure that people are clear on what their goals are.

(00:29:44):

And I’ll introduce this keyword to you, OKRs, so Objectives and Key Results. This is how you for sure know whether or not we are getting the intended results of our actions and ownership and making sure, reviewing all of those items on a quarterly basis as part of quarterly planning. So this is the strategic way to create accountability and alignment in your companies.

(00:30:09):

Starting with role mapping. So I hope most of you have some basic org chart already for your company. It might look like this. This is a super basic org chart that we start with clients, that there’s a CEO at the top most typically, they have some second in command, maybe has the title of president, COO, general manager, and that there are these core departments in the company. Definitely sales and marketing. It could be two different ones, operations or some form of delivery. Finance, administration. Sometimes I see people or HRs, it’s a box.

(00:30:44):

But there’s these specific boxes. And what makes a role map different than an org chart is putting these bullet points into each box. So management, but more importantly, what are the results that this role is intended to create? What are the processes that this role is intended to own? What are the key performance indicators or metrics or the key numbers that this one role owns? And for something like sales and marketing that’s more or less obvious. It’s like we got to hit our sales targets or hit our revenue targets.

(00:31:22):

It’s more interesting when you get to okay, operations, what is the key number that operations owns? Or finance, what is the key numbers that finance owns. And for the second in command, the CEO, what are the results that they’re intended to drive? So you can see here in every single box there’s three to four bullet points for what this box owns. And why is this important? What makes this role mapping?

(00:31:45):

Because when you have it defined like this saying, “What is the accountability?” And when it is measurable, then whoever is sitting in this seat, you have something to hold them accountable to. You’re able to say, “Your job in this seat is to hit this number.” And again, if you’re reviewing that weekly or more likely on a monthly or quarterly basis, what this will show you is across the entire organization, what are the different things that each role, each person owns at a senior level, a manager, director level, and at a frontline level.

(00:32:22):

And I know that text is a little small, but there are different bullets for each role. And if you have it measurable and you’re able to assess it every quarter, it’ll tell you who’s winning, who’s at risk yellow, and who’s underperforming, the reds. And this creates one, a lot of clarity and visibility for you in the senior leadership roles. And I hope, encourage you, inspires you. It tells you where to take action.

(00:32:58):

For those who are in the yellows, and I’m going to argue like, “All right, they’re probably B players. They’re not exactly getting their jobs done, but they might be the right people. They still may be cultural fits. What can we do to help them? Are the resources that they need, is there a need for training or mentorship? Just something to empower them to get to outperform.” And then there are the reds, I’m going to argue these are probably the C players. They’re not getting the job done and they’re likely not the right people for the company.

(00:33:29):

Most likely these are probably the worst at accountability, just straight up, just the point of this is being able to call it out. If these people are in the red and they’re definitely not getting the job done, they’re probably the worst at avoiding accountability. And then it just becomes a decision point for the team, for the leadership team, like, “What are you going to do?” Sorry, Jeff, I’m looking at you on screen. I know you’re smiling at this on the red, yellows, and greens. I know we’ve gone through this exercise a bunch of times with you and your team.

Jeff Plakans (00:33:59):

Yes. So interesting point with the reds is, okay, what to do about it? I think everybody’s at their edge of their seat, Ryan.

Ryan Villanueva (00:34:10):

Yes, yes. Number one I’m going to… Here’s what happens, doesn’t me not going off script. I meet with the team on a quarterly basis, and again, I have clients on this call right now. They know what I’m talking about. I meet with the team on a quarterly basis. We get to the section of the meeting where it’s like, “Let’s look at the roadmap. Let’s literally look through every single person. Is it a red, a yellow or a green according to this roadmap?” And the funny thing is that the people that are like the yellows, but even the reds, the team knows that those people are going to be yellows and reds. They did not need me, they did not need a quarterly meeting to know that information. And yet if they knew it, they had not acted on it.

(00:34:59):

And then we get to our meeting and if there’s, I think any value, I think there’s a lot more value than this. But if there’s any value, it’s being able to say, “This is now a forcing function for a decision. You are either going to make a decision to do something…” Again, give them resources or mentor them or coach them or transition them out of the business. Again, accountability or you’re going to decide to take no action. And that’s also a decision. And whatever you do, you got to own it. But at this point now the decision needs to be made. And then I do my best to facilitate that discussion. The team does their best to come up with the best decision and at the end of the day they got to own it. And then we track it week to week and see if anything has improved.

(00:35:44):

It’s hugely valuable, honestly. I probably couldn’t be more passionate about this particular topic. So role mapping is like a root cause solution, a root solution to figuring out accountability in the organization. The real issue is with the leadership team is going to take the action against it. And that’s when it gets to this next tool. Oh, one more thing is that the cool thing about role mapping when you do it this way is most org chart thinking is current state.

(00:36:16):

It’s role mapping, map out where you want the organization to go in the next year and even three years. And so this is super simple example of a small business where the CEO just owns sales. And they know at some point we need to bring on sales people, reps and administration. But when are they going to do it? That’s the point of a role map is be able to put a date and time and say, “We’re going to pull the trigger on this hire by this time.” That’s extremely helpful. Maybe the dates will move, but it’s helpful to map it out for the right time. That’s why I have this slide in there.

(00:36:55):

And what’s cool is that it all starts to tie together. So we already introduced scorecard, we talked about process, the 80/20 checklist, and the map pulls it together. The metrics and the processes we should see as bullets on the role map. So then when we meet, we can tell are we hitting those numbers, yes or no? And you have data because you’ll have multiple weeks of reds and greens for that specific number. What this lines up to is this idea of what I’m going to call objectives and key results or OKRs acronym OKRs.

(00:37:31):

And there’s a lot that can go into this. This is my particular specialty at Crews is implementing OKRs. But I wanted to lay this out here and define it and to say for your company for sure, you have goals. You have goals. You might call them priorities, you might call them initiatives. Maybe they’re projects like really big strategic projects. Dare I say, some of you might be calling them rocks, which comes from Stephen Covey, the author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And his idea of first things first, get the big rocks done, which just translated into scaling up and then EOS traction.

(00:38:07):

So whatever you have as goals in the organization, my challenge to you is can you take that goal and break it down into three to five key results? Whatever your goal is, whatever your objective is, can you define it in the form of measurable metrics? Like, “If we achieve this objective, then measurably it means this.” And are there key projects to support that objective? Are there key things we have to do to make that happen? So I’m just going to give you a superfast example of an OKR, which was the original OKR used at Google actually when it was implemented. If I’m a football team, I’m the general manager, my objective is making money, my two key results are win the Super Bowl and sell tickets, fill our stands at 88%.

(00:38:54):

I’m that general manager, I have two direct reports, the head coach, head of PR. Head coach’s objective is win the Super Bowl. How do they know they’re on track to winning the Super Bowl? If passing defense and special teams punt return, all can hit these numbers. Key results, same thing for head of PR. And then each of these heads has their respective managers, defensive coordinator, offensive special teams coordinator, et cetera, and they can break down further. And I wanted to share this example of OKRs because one, it was the original example used at Google, then Google used it, still uses it to this day. Silicon Valley companies across the board use OKRs and now OKRs are being introduced to small business.

(00:39:41):

What this simple example shows is how to create alignment using OKRs, when the OKR at the top is a driving the key results at the front line. And this is how we create not just alignment, but accountability up and down the organization using this kind of framework and thinking we can tell, like, “All right, which team is actually getting their key result done or it’s a hit or it’s a miss?” And if it’s a miss, then what are actions we can be taking to help them or things that we need to do to change up that team? So that’s why I wanted to introduce OKRs as a really key concept for creating alignment and accountability.

(00:40:23):

It’s helpful at the executive level for senior leadership. It drives the big picture stuff, the strategic stuff, but creates results for the more tactical initiatives. For the managers underneath them, it aligns their focus to the more strategic things, but again, gives them a way to hold their teams accountable. And then at the front line, the teams should be able to understand how my scorecard metrics are driving these key results, which line up to the big higher strategic objectives. So OKRs, creating alignment and accountability.

(00:40:58):

And what ties it all together, the role mapping, the OKRs, all the tools is when the senior leadership team is able to meet on an annual and quarterly basis as part of a full day planning session where they’re able to take a step back and look at everything, our OKRs in the last 90 days, how did we do? Our key numbers, our scorecards over the last 90 days, how did we do? Our role map, where are the reds, yellows, and greens on the role map? And in the first half of that quarterly planning day is an assessment of just really, really where we are in the business, having an open and honest conversation as a team.

(00:41:41):

And then in the second half of the day, all right, given that assessment, given all the hits and the misses, the reds, the yellows, and the greens, what are the actions we’re going to take? What are the OKRs, the objectives we need to set for the next 90 days? What are the metrics and the goals that we should be updating? Let’s tweak them a bit and make sure we solve our biggest challenges and address our biggest opportunities. And that’s a productive quarterly planning session that creates accountability and alignment.

(00:42:09):

So there’s a lot on this stack. There’s a whole stack of meetings and that at Crews we help clients implement all the way from annual and quarterly planning to strategy workshopping. The weekly on-track meeting, which I’ve talked about and at times even implementing a daily huddle. So for teams that are seasonal, like mine, when we do summer camps, we have a daily huddle in the summers.

(00:42:35):

Okay, 15 minutes left in this presentation and I’ve got one more section, but wanted to ask you these questions. I’m curious on this call, how many of you have a role map of clearly defined roles and responsibilities one to five. So that’s just the role mapping part. Do you even have that mapped out? I’m very curious. And if you do have that mapped out, how many of you feel like you have the right people in the right seats? I’m curious how many are using some methodology for goal setting, whether it’s rocks or OKRs or something else. There are multiple methodologies for this. And if you are doing quarterly planning sessions.

(00:43:26):

Super interesting. Jeff, I can see you smirking on looking at the numbers too. Okay, so on this, we got a range. I’m glad to hear that. It sounds like most of you have some annual quarterly planning meetings. And again, I see a bunch of clients on this call, which is great. Some of you don’t have it yet. If you literally have this as a one or a two, you should talk to me. I can help you implement this part of it. This is really, really good. The thing that got the lowest score though is the right people in the right seats. So maybe it’s a little bit more middling, right? There’s no ones and no fives in this one. So that’s interesting. So you probably feel like… Okay, sorry I spoke too soon. There is one, one. All right.

(00:44:13):

Right people in the right seats is the name in the game for everything. And if you feel like you don’t 100% have the right people in the right seats, then there’s likely action that you need to take. And that’s where having a scorecard and role mapping is going to be very useful for telling you where those gaps are. So I see there’s a kind of… Again, even distribution around having an org chart or a roadmap, some of you had a one. And then even distribution or having OKRs or Rocks. So this one is more surprising to me that more people on this call don’t have some sort of specific methodology for goal setting. So if you don’t have annual quarter planning and you don’t have that methodology of goal setting, we should definitely talk.

(00:44:58):

Okay, last piece on this and then Jeff, I swear we’ll have time for Q&A. I’m going very fast. We talked a lot about the tools, I talked about the practical and tactical tools. I talked about strategic stuff. But at the end of the day, accountability and alignment is more than just tools. It’s more than just creating spreadsheets and facilitating meetings. We’re talking about a culture. What these things should be doing is creating a culture on our teams regardless of whether you’re remote, hybrid, or fully in-person, that we’re creating a culture around accountability and alignment, and the tools are going to be reflections of that and reinforcement of that.

(00:45:38):

And so at a very, very high level, I just wanted to bring up, here are the tools that help create that culture on the team for the specific team member. These are things that a manager does with their direct report. Starting with, and I’ll be very fast on this core values. So the company needs to define their core values. And I’m curious how many people on this call have their core values to defined. These are examples at Crews.

(00:46:11):

And what makes core values real… What makes core values more than words on a website is when we are hiring, firing, recognizing, and rewarding against them. And so when I say like, “Hey, review the role map, red, yellow, green on different seats,” that also accounts for the core values. The reds are people who are not only missing their targets, they also don’t match the core values of the company. And for sure that’s an obvious candidate for transitioning.

(00:46:43):

Core values is foundational, here’s the next tool. Most managers that I meet are doing some sort of one-on-one with their direct reports. They try to do it weekly, maybe it’s biweekly, sometimes it’s monthly, but those one-on-ones tend to be very problem-focused. Like, “Review with me your client list.” Or, “What are the biggest roadblocks to closing deals” or, “Issues with specific projects?” There’s a need to schedule a quarterly check-in, something that’s a little bit higher level than just solving that week’s problem. And what we actually recommend to clients is actually, if you’re a manager, take out your direct report for coffee or take them off site, just go somewhere. Or again, you’re remote, so you need to schedule this time.

(00:47:31):

And a bunch of you said earlier that giving and receiving feedback is hard in remote environments. Scheduling the quarterly check-in is that touch point for giving and receiving feedback. So on the right here is a template, is a worksheet that we use at Crews where it’s like, “All right, here’s all the core values. Here’s the desire for your seat and the results that you intend to get for the seat. Score yourselves on it. Here’s the scorecard metrics that you’ve owned in the last 90 days. Here’s the OKRs that you owned in the last 90 days. Give me a list of what’s working and not working.” That simple question of what’s working, not working, that leads a great discussion for feedback.

(00:48:10):

And then it yields like, “All right, what should we do in the next 90 days? And what are some more immediate next steps?” So this is intended to not be a formal performance review. That needs to be a separate kind of HR function sort of thing. It’s more formal and more documented. This should be a little bit more casual, but give you space to have a real conversation about what’s happening for them and for you as a manager and in the company. So that’s the quarterly check-in. Third tool is a position agreement. So many of you I think, have job descriptions. You may have job descriptions for your teams. More than likely they need to be updated. My suggestion is to update them, or you can use this template.

(00:48:56):

If the scorecard is defined, the role map is defined and the processes are defined, put that in their job description or use this template, position agreement. It literally just makes it very clear for that specific individual, “This is what I own,” right? And ownership, we said is synonymous with accountability. And in this template we even have them sign it at the bottom. And here’s the last thing because a number of you said that the root, root thing for you, tied for number one was lack of trust on the team. We’ve been focused a lot on accountability. So I talked about Lencioni and the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and his argument is that the root cause of all team health issues, if we’re not getting results, if we’re avoiding accountability, if we’re unable to commit to a decision, if we avoid conflict, the root issue is the lack of trust.

(00:49:59):

That is the hard hitting one. That’s one that’s really difficult in remote, hybrid teams. And what we recommend to teams and we help them do is you need to make the space and time to build that trust. We encourage our teams, again, whether they’re in-person or remote, to actually have a book club and start by reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Read that book and actually openly rank on each level of that pyramid one to 10, how are we doing on each level of it? We help teams just understand where you’re coming from. So we call that the conversation starter, and we help teams learn how to give and receive feedback in a positive and constructive way. So we call it the one thing exercise. And yeah, we can do that totally remotely, virtually.

(00:50:49):

And there are additional tools that we prescribe to clients like understanding their DISC profile or using other psychometric assessments. Myers-Briggs is another one, Kolbe. Having a way to clear the air or clean when there are issues that come up. Scheduling some social fun. So again, I know I’m focused on hybrid and remote teams, ideally to the extent you’re able to pull teams in person, if you can do it every 90 days, great. Maybe it’s every six months, even if it’s just once a year.

(00:51:19):

Here’s a great one. Meals, retreats and activities. So shout out to one of my clients on here, Moniker Partners. They host corporate retreats. Awesome, incredible retreats, specific to remote or distributed teams. So if you’re that, and I can highly recommend them for planning in-person corporate retreats. Thanks, Sydney. And then a 24-hour rule. If you’ve got any hurt feelings, then 24 hours or less, make sure you manage them.

(00:51:51):

Those are my last tools. I’m going to skip this next set of questions. Team, I’ve covered a lot and I hope you got the practical and tackle out of it. If you’re a manager of a remote hybrid team. If you’re a senior leader, I have the more strategic stuff, right? Role mapping, OKRs, quarterly planning. And then on just a cultural basis, especially if you’re a people leader, like an HR leader, I hope those tools look familiar in terms of 360 reviews, performance reviews, et cetera. But then this is a different spin on it.

(00:52:19):

More importantly, you’re creating culture. So I wanted to attack those three angles. When we’re talking about holding employees accountable, I prefer to think of it as empowering our teams to hold themselves accountable and create alignment in our companies. With that, we got five minutes left, but Jeff, yeah, I think you’re joining me for this Q&A, but yeah, any-

Jeff Plakans (00:52:43):

Yeah. So we want to encourage everybody to fire questions into the chat. Ryan, to get you started, I have a question that I want you to talk about. And this is to giving and receiving feedback. So we’ve been talking about that and how to do that in a productive way. So can you talk a little bit about the discussion that needs to happen with someone who’s either failing to be accountable or failing from a performance perspective. Where we’re calling out the performance and not the person because I think that has some… If it’s done incorrectly, it has some negative outcomes. So can you talk a little bit about how somebody might do that a little bit more with better outcomes, I guess?

Ryan Villanueva (00:53:32):

A few different things. One is obviously if you have the tools in place and we’ve got data and we’ve got that stuff and we can see it, that makes for an easier conversation because it’s there. Here’s the other thing, when I’ve been in this situation and when I see clients in it, the person we’re talking about more than likely realizes they’re struggling. So it’s not some secret. Tactically what I’ve had to do as a manager leader and then I see clients do it, is yeah, they set up that meeting with the individuals, a one-on-one. We’re not trying to hide anything. We actually want that person to come prepared to the meeting.

(00:54:07):

So I actually give them that quarterly check-in template or some variation of it. Where they can just give themselves the feedback, give themselves the opportunity to assess, and I’ve prepared my end of it. So then when we go into that call, we’re not just making stuff up on the spot, we had a little bit of time ahead of time to think about it and get to a productive outcome, which is like, “Here are the things we need to do.” Some of my clients I know have called this PIPs, they think of it that way. Sometimes I’ve just called it next steps with the person, but here’s specific results that we need to see in the next 90 days and then go from there.

Jeff Plakans (00:54:48):

So before we get to the next question, I just have a little story I want to tell about that. Ryan, you’re going to laugh because you remember this. We did a core values check in one of our quarterly… Well, we do them every time, but where we rated, everybody got rated against core values. And our core values, one of our core values is that we need to be reliable. And of course, I was out of the room at the time this was being done because I had to take a call and my team rated me as a yellow, unreliable.

(00:55:18):

And I was really broken about that because it was one of our core values. And I came back and the process was that I had been so over scheduled that I was almost late to most of my meetings or had to cancel things at the last minute and so forth, and that’s what made me unreliable. It was a real eye-opener. So I think that process, both having been on the receiving and the giving end of that is very, very helpful when it can tie back to core values that everybody knows and everybody loves. And when it comes down to these types of things, nothing’s a surprise.

Ryan Villanueva (00:55:56):

I appreciate you sharing that story, Jeff, and I think that’s a testament to your leadership and the culture that I know you’re trying to create at Commonwealth, for real.

Jeff Plakans (00:56:03):

Thank you. We got a great question here. How do you manage employees that have personal issues interfering with their performance? Where do you draw the line between being compassionate and keeping the trust and drawing a hard line?

Ryan Villanueva (00:56:22):

I feel like there are two angles to this, and I could talk about it from literally a performance management piece. But Jeff, I know that you and Commonwealth, I’m thinking Susanna, right, from an HR, there’s an HR view on that too for sure. So in my experience, yep, for sure. The personal stuff comes up and we want to be compassionate, I think that’s aligned with your core values and at the same time, it’s like the business is a business and it needs to run. So these things are not… I don’t think I’ve ever found a formula for this kind of thing, it’s always seems to be a negotiation with what’s going on with that employee in the situation.

(00:57:03):

But what I think is the trap is when the… it’s not being overly compassionate, but it’s like as a manager, you’re also trying to protect the business and everyone else who works in the business and their livelihoods too, right? And we’ve got to balance this… the need for the greater good with compassion for the specific individual situation. And I think as a manager, you do your best. You still bring up the data, and I think you engage with HR as well if it’s a personal issue. Jeff, I don’t know if there’s anything you want to add to that.

Jeff Plakans (00:57:37):

Well, yeah, I was just going to say everyone has much larger problems if the business fails to perform and underperforms a result of that individual. So, in our experience, there’s only so much that the organization can bear before they have to take action. And that doesn’t mean it needs to be action that is not compassionate with the issues, but it has to take action to allow the business to move forward. So I’m restating what you said already, Ryan, but that’s…

(00:58:15):

And again, this framework gives you the framework to say, “Well, this is why.” Or, “These were our goals that we identified that we need to accomplish as a company. This is on the Scorecard, but we’ve got reds across the board. At some point we need to make sure these reds turn green.” So how do we do that and continue to be sensitive to whatever the personal situation might be? So just here, we’re at the top of the hour and I want to be mindful of everybody’s time because this was advertised for only an hour.

(00:58:49):

Thank you so much, Ryan, for the time and the effort. And yes, we’re going to be sending out the recording and yes, we’re going to be sending out the deck and everything related to it. Hopefully everyone got a lot out of this and certainly forward more questions to myself or to Ryan by hitting that QR code there. And we’ll continue that discussion. Just one other shout out, not a lot of organizations know this, but Commonwealth has really expanded our HR offerings over the last six to 12 months.

(00:59:22):

And I would encourage everybody, if you’re having some of the challenges that come down to discussions that need to take place from an HR perspective, some of the processes that were discussed here within today’s session and certainly the compliance issues that need to come into play, do not hesitate to give us a call. We’re happy to talk before we charge anything. So of course, do we have something or does Crews & co. have something that might be a good fit that helps move your organization forward? So with that, everyone, thank you so much. Thank you for your time and we look forward to seeing you soon. Good afternoon.

Ryan Villanueva (00:59:59):

Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Jeff.