Using incentives to drive accountability

- Once you've defined what people are accountable for, … you need to drive their behaviors. … Incentives are a very powerful way for doing so. … Leaders can create incentives for people … who over-deliver on their accountabilities. … Things like bonuses or promotions. … You can also use punishment or disincentives … when people fail to live up to those accountabilities. … Allow me to offer an example. … When I was part of an operating division … of a large corporation, we knew very clearly … what we were accountable for. … We had revenue targets and customer account targets. … One year we missed our numbers and we didn't get a bonus. … It was extremely frustrating. … Now we knew exactly why. … We knew what the metric was and we fell short. … But it was really difficult watching our colleagues … in other divisions get big bonuses that year … because they met expectations. … Now the next year, again, … we knew what we were accountable for. … The numbers were clearly spelled out … and we exceeded our numbers and got a huge bonus that year. …