Online Accountability: Are You Data-Driven or Merely Data-Informed?

We’ve finally arrived at the last step in the “Seven Keys to Cre­at­ing a Data-Driven Orga­ni­za­tion” — hold­ing peo­ple account­able. Dur­ing the course of this arti­cle series, I have cov­ered the impor­tance of hav­ing an exec­u­tive spon­sor, a clear mea­sure­ment strat­egy, ade­quate staffing and train­ing, cor­po­rate stan­dards, momentum-building quick wins, and proper data val­i­da­tion. Account­abil­ity is not the last step in cre­at­ing a data-driven orga­ni­za­tion because it is the least impor­tant. I view hold­ing peo­ple account­able as the final cherry on top of your deli­cious, data-driven organization.

Account­abil­ity is defined as “an oblig­a­tion or will­ing­ness to accept respon­si­bil­ity or to account for one’s actions.” In recent years, we’ve seen an unset­tling trend of low account­abil­ity in busi­ness, finance, media, gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion, sports, enter­tain­ment, etc. Sev­eral com­pa­nies have also suf­fered from a lack of account­abil­ity in man­ag­ing their online prop­er­ties — even when they have had web ana­lyt­ics tools in place.

Online account­abil­ity doesn’t just hap­pen on its own. You can’t sim­ply plug in an ana­lyt­ics solu­tion like Site­Cat­a­lyst or Insight and expect your employ­ees to be more account­able. Know­ing that the last online mar­ket­ing cam­paign was a com­plete fail­ure hasn’t stopped many teams from repeat­ing the same mis­takes — over and over. With­out lead­er­ship sup­port and an effec­tive stick or car­rot, web met­rics can be ignored or over­looked. A “data-driven” orga­ni­za­tion with­out account­abil­ity is really just a data-informed orga­ni­za­tion - one that con­sumes a fair amount of data and reports but isn’t moti­vated to act on the data. An account­abil­ity com­po­nent is needed to for­mally weave a data-driven men­tal­ity into the fab­ric of your entire organization.

How to instill account­abil­ity in your organization

As I was research­ing for this arti­cle, I came across a great arti­cle by Lee Froschheiser on pur­su­ing account­abil­ity within the work­place. He pro­vided a use­ful check­list for cre­at­ing account­abil­ity, which I’ve mod­i­fied slightly for data-driven online organizations:

1. Estab­lish clear online goals and expec­ta­tions. Always set stan­dards for per­for­mance, and put poli­cies and pro­ce­dures in place.
2. Make sure you’ve got account­abil­ity lead­ers within the orga­ni­za­tion. These will be those man­agers who chal­lenge the drive and per­for­mance of other employ­ees and mea­sure the results.
3. Fos­ter an orga­ni­za­tion of can­dor. Trans­par­ent, hon­est com­mu­ni­ca­tions enable peo­ple to pro­vide feed­back about their per­for­mance and limit the oppor­tu­nity to hedge around an issue.
4. Develop and imple­ment a follow-up sys­tem of account­abil­ity, which allows for reg­u­lar meet­ings that mea­sure and track per­for­mance, pro­duc­tiv­ity, and results.
5. Focus on Key Per­for­mance Indi­ca­tors (KPIs) instead of the triv­ial met­rics when set­ting com­pany goals. Do the same for indi­vid­ual goals, those set by each employee.
6. Put the proper rewards and recog­ni­tion in place. Tie employee com­pen­sa­tion to tar­gets based on web KPIs. In addi­tion, remem­ber recog­ni­tion doesn’t always have to be mon­e­tary in nature. Ver­bal praise, both in the pri­vate and pub­lic set­ting, is highly appre­ci­ated and moti­vat­ing. A sin­cere “thank you” can also go a long way.
7. Define own­er­ship (stew­ard­ship) of each new process and pro­ce­dure you establish.
8. Develop the lead­er­ship pipeline. Account­abil­ity starts at the top of the orga­ni­za­tion and works itself down. CEOs and man­agers must strive to per­fect their own lead­er­ship skills and account­abil­ity before expect­ing oth­ers within the orga­ni­za­tion to do the same. Lead by example.

I think Froschheiser’s last point is crit­i­cal. Account­abil­ity doesn’t start with the front­line employ­ees who are tasked with man­ag­ing the var­i­ous online cam­paigns and web­sites. It starts at the top with the CEO or CMO hold­ing his or her senior man­age­ment team account­able for web KPIs. It trick­les or flows down from there.

Account­abil­ity in practice

As a con­sul­tant work­ing with var­i­ous com­pa­nies over the years, I’ve found that one of the key account­abil­ity areas where “the rub­ber meets the road” is in tying employee com­pen­sa­tion (e.g., quarterly/semi-annual/annual bonus) to web met­rics. Vari­able pay tied to online KPIs can be an effec­tive man­age­ment tool in chang­ing behav­ior and align­ing indi­vid­u­als with team, depart­ment, and com­pany goals. Are web met­rics an impor­tant part of your bonus? Does being held to the KPI-based tar­gets pos­i­tively influ­ence your behav­ior (assum­ing they are rea­son­able)? Hope­fully, the answers are yes and yes.

It doesn’t just have to be about money. There are a num­ber of alter­na­tive incen­tives based on tying employee and team per­for­mance to online KPIs:

• High-performing indi­vid­u­als and teams are rec­og­nized in depart­ment meetings
• Hit­ting cer­tain goals leads to an oppor­tu­nity to show­case their suc­cess to the CMO or CEO
• Achiev­ing goals leads to lunch with your department’s top executive
• Reach­ing goals leads to depart­ment party/activity or extra days of vacation
• Meet­ing goals leads to an oppor­tu­nity to go to a user con­fer­ence for training

There are lim­it­less pos­si­bil­i­ties for reward­ing and rec­og­niz­ing indi­vid­ual and team efforts to drive greater account­abil­ity. I’d be curi­ous to know what forms of reward and recog­ni­tion have been effec­tive at your com­pany. No two com­pa­nies are iden­ti­cal in terms of cor­po­rate cul­ture, man­age­ment approach, busi­ness model, etc. There­fore, the key is to iden­tify what works for your employ­ees and orga­ni­za­tion, and use appro­pri­ate pro­grams to rein­force a data-driven cul­ture at your company.

Account­able for more than just KPI-based goals

Online account­abil­ity extends beyond just inject­ing web KPIs into your cur­rent com­pen­sa­tion and lead­er­ship approach. Hold­ing peo­ple account­able in a data-driven orga­ni­za­tion means that peo­ple are not only held to achiev­ing goals based on web KPIs, but they are also account­able for other data-driven aspects such as train­ing and cor­po­rate standards.

By estab­lish­ing train­ing goals for key stake­holder groups within your orga­ni­za­tion, account­abil­ity can play a key role in fuel­ing user adop­tion. In addi­tion, account­abil­ity con­sid­er­a­tions should be expanded to your busi­ness part­ners. For exam­ple, ad agen­cies should be expected to adhere to estab­lished cor­po­rate stan­dards to ensure accu­rate tag­ging and report­ing. A beau­ti­fully designed web­site with poor or no tag­ging is unac­cept­able for data-driven organizations.

As a final thought on account­abil­ity, some low-performing peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions may strug­gle with being held account­able. I like what HP CEO, Mark Hurd said, “The more account­able I can make you, the eas­ier it is for you to show you’re a great per­former.” High-performing indi­vid­u­als, teams, and com­pa­nies aren’t afraid of account­abil­ity. We need more fear­less, data-driven orga­ni­za­tions. More than just a final cherry on top, greater account­abil­ity within an orga­ni­za­tion will prove to be a linch­pin to becom­ing more data-driven — and ulti­mately more suc­cess­ful as indi­vid­u­als and as a company.