Page 137 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

126 HBR Leader’s Handbook

feedback process that we discussed in the previous chapter. As she con-
ducted these dialogues, during the next year, she ended up replacing a num-
ber of the business leaders because they couldn’t achieve her ratcheted-up
expectations for the organization. But that didn’t mean she fired them;
some she just moved to roles more suited to their skills. As Macia explained,
“They weren’t the right people for these jobs. But that doesn’t mean that they
weren’t good people, or capable contributors, just that they didn’t have the
skills needed to deliver against the higher growth expectations.”
Again, the process of holding people accountable for results is not just
the purview of a CEO or senior executive. Leaders at all levels need to do
this in order to create a culture of accountability and results delivery. If the
people on your team don’t achieve their goals, you won’t succeed. And if you
don’t learn how to hold people accountable early in your career, you’ll be
less likely to advance. So while you might be unable to move team members
elsewhere in the organization, you can conduct tough performance con-
versations, withhold bonus or promotion recommendations, shift people’s
roles and responsibilities within your team, and generally make it clear
that delivering on results is nonnegotiable.

Reducing organizational complexity

As your people strive to meet the high goals you have set, they may uncover
organizational barriers that get in their way—a reporting structure that
means a team isn’t incentivized to work with them or an outdated process
that doesn’t take into account new technologies, for example. Your team
members will deal with some of these on their own; that’s one way you’ll
find out how good they are and how much ability they have to be resilient
and creative. But sometimes the barriers they uncover will require you, as
their overall leader, to resolve or mitigate them because they cut across
many groups and need someone with higher authority to resolve. Clearing
away these barriers is the second element of focusing on results because it
helps your people work together more simply and efficiently toward
achieving those high-performance results and leading your organization
to more significant impact.