TOO MANY COOKS: Managing complex accountabilities

Episode #230 transcript

In this modern era of enlightened inclusiveness, the pendulum has swung decisively from independently operating silos towards sharing and collaboration. This has seen the resurgence of role sharing at all levels, and in organizations of all sizes.

Collaboration is a critical ingredient of working successfully in the complex organizations we now live in. But what happens when accountabilities are split to the point where they become opaque, confused, or misunderstood?

From low-level, part-time job sharing, to co-CEOs of major global businesses, we witness the hazards of trying to share accountabilities. Humans just aren't particularly good at it, for all sorts of reasons. Some of the higher profile co-CEO arrangements have crumbled fairly publicly in the last couple of years, so I thought it was probably a good time to address the issue of role sharing, and the impact it has on performance.

If you just want your people to be able to come to work and feel good about contributing in a team environment with their peers, hey, shared accountabilities are just the ticket! But if it's performance you're after, it's very unlikely that you'll find it in a structure that assumes accountabilities can be spread across multiple people.

WHERE DID JOB SHARING COME FROM ANYWAY?

I genuinely believe that the old saying, “Too many cooks spoil the broth” is a business principle we should live by. Let's start with a look at job sharing. Why was it invented? Job sharing is defined as, regular part-time work where two people share the accountabilities of one position and simply split the hours.

This became a pretty popular way to offer flexible working arrangements. For example, it gave a path to re-employment for new mothers who wanted to return to the workforce, but could only do so on a part-time basis while still meeting the demands of their family duties. And for this reason, it was a really big step forward in the quest for gender equity.

For two individuals sharing a single role, the accountabilities are the same and they're simply divided by the allocation of time. For this reason, they're suited more to lower level roles that don't require quite as much accountability. As the level and breadth of accountability increases, the effectiveness of job-sharing declines. And this because the two people would have to ultimately agree on any decisions. Well, either that or the more dominant person would simply get their way. Add to this the fact that humans are pretty resourceful and everyone would learn how to play Mum off against Dad pretty quickly.

“I need an answer on this issue, but Em’s a hard-ass, so I'll wait until Thursday because Marty will be in the role on Thursday, and I've got a better chance of convincing him.”

So, even though the accountability clearly lies with the role, it requires excellent communication between the people who share that role. Job sharing arrangements are also unwieldy and difficult to manage, and they're likely to be more costly. For example, things like training and development, and performance management have to be replicated.

And think about the practicalities of working out who's performing and who isn't. When an awesome result is achieved by the two people in a shared role, you'd have to wonder, was one of those individuals benefiting from a free-rider effect? And when a disaster occurs? Well, you’d have to wonder, where was the actual breakdown? I believe these things actually matter.

So how would you overcome the all-care-no-responsibility culture that joint accountabilities tend to create?

The literature on job sharing indicates that it took off pretty well in the public sector. Government organizations embraced it but the private sector was, to quote a phrase, "Slow to follow". This is probably a good indication of a lack of belief in the efficacy of job sharing as a solution to a business problem.

These days, we've got a much better understanding of the need for personal flexibility. So I suspect there are going to be less requirements for a full-time role to be split between multiple individuals in the future. The concept of job sharing is probably being crowded out by more flexible arrangements that are widely available. I think it's now more likely that a set of objectives and accountabilities will simply be defined into a separate role.

ARE TWO HEADS REALLY BETTER THAN ONE?

With job sharing, you have two people splitting one full-time role so, leaving aside the other issues, at least the accountability is clearly assigned to that role. But having two full-time people splitting the same role is even more problematic.

Enter the co-CEO.

I first came across this years ago as a Chief Information Officer. The company I worked for was a customer of software giant, SAP. At that time, SAP was the largest global supplier of business management software. In 2010, I met with Jim Hagemann Snabe, one of the newly appointed co-CEOs of SAP. Jim was based in Europe and the other half of the CEO act, Bill McDermott, was based in the USA. Jim was an internal appointment, and Bill was external.

As Jim described it to me, his accountabilities were focused on the product itself, and the future of the technology roadmap, while McDermott's role was focused on the customer. They both had global accountabilities for the markets and the 50,000 odd people who worked for SAP at the time. This arrangement lasted for about three years before Jim announced that he would step down from the co-CEO role.

I tend to get awfully curious about this stuff, and even though the real story rarely emerges in public, I went looking for some earlier articles in the hope that I'd see some indication that the arrangement wasn't all champagne and roses from the get-go.

Interestingly, I found a brief Bloomberg interview on YouTube, which was conducted in April 2011 with McDermott and Hagemann Snabe. The co-CEO structure had been in place for just over a year at this point. So I looked for signs that might portend what was to come.

Watching the interview, I noticed a few things. From the amount of talking time that each received (not a huge difference, but probably 60/40 in favor of McDermott) to the body language and overall demeanor of the two CEOs, it was pretty obvious to me that McDermott was the dominant force in the shared CEO office.

McDermott even said at one point early on in the interview, “Jim's got a great story about Japan that he must tell you!”

And the Oscar for best actor in a supporting role goes to…. So look, no surprise that a couple of years later, Jim vacated the role to make Bill McDermott the sole CEO.

Now, I don't want to say that a hugely successful global organization like SAP could possibly be slow learners, but when McDermott retired in 2019, SAP again appointed co-CEOs, Jen Morgan and Christian Klein. Morgan and Klein were described respectively as a “sales superstar” and an “internal wunderkind” (well, of course SAP is a German company). But this particular tilt at co-CEO-dom lasted barely six months. Fortunately this time, SAP could at least point to the pandemic as the catalyst for backtracking on the co-CEO model. According to the SAP chairman, "Going back to a single CEO was to ensure strong unambiguous steering of the company."

Amen!

WHAT HAPPENED AT SALESFORCE?

More recently, we've seen Bret Taylor, who's also the former chair of Twitter, leave his role as co-CEO at Salesforce, another global software giant. Salesforce was founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff and three others. Two years later in 2001, Benioff was named CEO and chairman.

Just a little aside here: I don't particularly like the combined Chair / CEO role either, just from a governance perspective. Whereas it might reduce friction in the decision-making process, I think it gives one individual way too much influence over proceedings. The whole point of the board is to oversee strategy and risk, while providing good governance. If the CEO also controls the board, the likelihood of one person doing as he or she pleases, without an appropriate level of oversight and control, increases dramatically. But, I digress…

Taylor came to Salesforce as part of its acquisition of Quip in 2016, and initially Taylor was made Chief Operating Officer. Later he was promoted to the role of co-CEO. Now, this looks like it was probably an attempt at a succession plan: Taylor was being groomed as Benioff's successor, but apparently Marc Benioff couldn't let go.

As far as you can believe the media reports, Taylor supposedly oversaw 10 top executives running five key areas: finance, operations, engineering, staffing and marketing. This is the classic COO role, with a few notable add-ons. Insiders say that the two CEOs were stepping on each other's toes, not staying in their lanes. Apparently Taylor was focused largely on profitability and Benioff more on growth. The other problem, of course, was that deep division started to emerge in the executive team, based on their reporting lines.

This wasn't Benioff's first bite of the cherry, either. He had Keith Block as co-CEO in 2018, and that arrangement only lasted 18 months.

The co-CEO structure isn't the only way to completely confuse accountabilities at the top of an organization either: some companies have a separate “President” and CEO and, in these cases, it's never obvious to anyone who does what. Others have an “Executive Chairman” and a CEO (the executive part of that title implies a management accountability). And, of course, I've seen many “Executive Directors” stumble all over a CEO’s accountabilities.

Let's face it, the boards that put these arrangements in place aren't stupid. Perhaps they want to get the benefit of two people with exceptional and complementary skill sets? Perhaps they want to retain two really good people, when one might otherwise leave? Perhaps they're looking for a soft landing on their succession plans? But, whatever their intent, it seems to be incredibly hard to make it work in practical terms.

It's not the boxes on a structure chart that make the most difference. It's the white space in between the boxes that does.

THE THREE-STEP PROCESS FOR STRUCTURING TEAMS

As you can see, the big problem with job sharing, co-CEOs, and other similar structures is that accountabilities aren't crystal clear. Who's accountable for specific decisions and results, in a world where overlaps are part and parcel of modern org structures?

Even if you separate the roles by having different reporting relationships that seem to clearly delineate the accountabilities, human nature is to form strong bonds and identity around your proximate peers and immediate team. It can turn pretty quickly into an “us or them”... and the power struggle begins!

Let's face it, most of us are never going to have to decide whether or not to establish a co-CEO relationship. But we all need to clearly identify who's doing what in our team, regardless of its size or the number of levels.

So let me give you my three-step process for how to think more clearly about structure when you find yourself in the position of having to define it.

1. The first step is to make sure you get the order right. Strategy first, then Structure, then People!

We have a tendency to think mostly about the people, and how accountabilities can best be divided between them--and, yes, there's definitely a need for the informal tailoring of roles based on who's occupying them--but you need to think through the issues in the right way. 

First, what are you trying to achieve? What's your strategy? Next, what structure do you need to put in place in order to deliver that strategy? What roles and accountabilities need to be created to execute effectively? And finally, after you've done that, who can you put in those roles to perform them brilliantly?

2. The second step is to make sure there is one and only one name next to every major deliverable.

Splitting an accountability between more than one person is a slippery slope, and it's often done in the name of collaboration. “Oh, Greg and Sally are both accountable for that deliverable. They're collaborating.” Pig's arse!

That's how overlaps and gaps develop. One and only one name: one head to pat, one arse to kick, and they both belong to the same person. Then you encourage that person to collaborate with others. But if you try to do it the other way around, it simply doesn't work.

Starting with an environment of well-meaning collaboration, and then trying to superimpose strong accountability over the top of that, is an order of magnitude harder than starting with single point accountability and then fostering collaboration.

3. The third and final step is to remain doggedly focused on outcomes.

In the second law of thermodynamics, entropy tells us that things tend to naturally seek a state of disorder. And if you do nothing different in the way you lead, people will tend to fall back to the loose indiscipline of shared accountability.

So when you're trying to gauge progress and performance, you have to look at delivered value, not activity. You’ve probably heard me talk about this ad nauseam.

When it comes to your team structure, if you focus on activity, you won't even be able to see the ill-effects of the shared accountabilities, let alone resolve the gaps and overlaps. The debilitating inefficiencies are going to remain hidden under the careful protection of your lovely all-care-no-responsibility people. And even really good people will happily hide behind vague and nebulous accountabilities in order to avoid the harsh gaze of performance scrutiny.

SHARED ROLES: THE ENEMY OF EXECUTION EXCELLENCE!

Even in situations where it might seem like a good idea to share a role, I would strongly advise you to rethink it. It's a lesson that the tech sector seems to be relearning frequently--it’s way too much like Groundhog Day.

You may think that it's a great idea to get two highly skilled and experienced people to contribute to the outcomes. Two heads are better than one, right? But that's simply not true. The few pros are massively outweighed by the many cons.

So, get the structure right first and make sure that you have a single point of accountability for every major deliverable. Every decision, and all resourcing has to gravitate to that single point, so that the individual is empowered to deliver. This is the foundation of execution excellence. Don't mess with it!

It isn't easy, of course, otherwise everyone would be doing it. But if you can manage to get this right, then you can take the next step, which is making sure that you don't have any passengers on your team. Once we head into this territory, it takes real commitment as a leader. But it's something you’re more than capable of if you truly believe how great the benefits are, for everyone involved.

RESOURCES AND RELATED TOPICS:

• Ep. #19: Execution For Results - Listen Here

• Ep. #44: The Standard You Walk Past Is The Standard You Set - Listen Here

• Ep. #79: Where Accountability and Culture Collide - Listen Here

• Ep. #163: Communicating Value & Acing Accountability - Listen Here

• Ep. #205: Leading in a Low-accountability Culture - Listen Here

• Buy the NO BULLSH!T LEADERSHIP BOOK - Here

• Explore other podcast episodes - Here

• Take our FREE Level Up Leadership Masterclass - Start Now

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