Are You an Unaccountable Leader?

“It unclear who is accountable for what!” she said in desperation. “Until we know who is responsible, we spend months falling over each other in this matrix mess” said another leader to me in a different global firm.

Months of work and untold amounts of money are wasted on in-fighting and turf wars. Incredibly some CEOs I have come across actually deliberately keep boundaries blurred and overlapping, so their reports fight over resources and new clients.

This wastes “red energy” on internal power struggles and does nothing to grow the business and delight clients (green energy of growth). Indeed it does the opposite and creates a toxic environment of land grabs, bullying and destructive internal competition.

So as CEO, Partner or MD please make everyone’s roles and responsibilities clear and define success specifically. Set the culture and model healthy leadership behaviour. Set up reward systems which encourage collaboration towards a common goal, not individual greed and destruction of peers.

Ignore this area at your peril. Matrix structures are fudges and make bureaucratic mess.

Warm regards. Jonathan