I watched a 2018 talk by Simon Sinek this week in which he connected leadership and accountability. Sinek expanded upon the theme that great leaders and long-lasting companies put their people first, not numbers. He said:
“Accountability is never to a number. Accountability is to a person. And if there is no relationship with the person who’s supposed to look after us and the person we’re supposed to be working for, then we don’t feel accountable.”
Metrics disconnected from people don’t inspire, yet it is easy to attend more to tactics than to leadership. Grant applications and internal funding memos ask for measurement plans and staff biographies, but rarely (never?) ask for leadership assessments and leadership development plans. The tunnel vision view of organizations that is characteristic of project-based funding leads to undervaluing leadership, talent recognition, and talent development. If we give leadership its due credit, salaries and influence should rise for social sector leaders. Scaling up social solutions requires scaling up leadership and teamwork and not just management and methods. Funders too often ask, ‘what was responsible?’ rather than ‘who was responsible?’
Our sector promotes metrics to inspire performance and allocates significant grant resources – particularly grantee time – to generate and report metrics. However, the measures of social outcomes and impact often come at the end of complex causal chains that diffuse responsibility and plausible deniability. Assessments often occur after it is too late to change practice and priorities. Many metrics provide neither inspiration nor accountability. Funders seeking performance are asking ‘how will you take care of your evaluation?’ when they should be asking ‘how are you taking care of your people?’
Leaders and organizations are supposed to look after us and weave collective goals into the organizational DNA. When public or private donors assert the metrics and goals for projects, it creates a cognitive dissonance between what the mission statement and org chart say and where power is perceived to reside. We expect that the entity or person that sets the goals is the one who takes care of us and who we are working for. We wouldn’t expect to create an exceptional for-profit company if investors only wanted to fund select new products for a limited time, or if leaders couldn’t set their purpose, goals, and metrics. Yet we try to create exceptional social organizations with piecemeal funding, externally set metrics, insufficient recognition of leadership, and confusion of who is looking after who and who are we working for.
These are certainly not universal problems. The solutions surround us and provide a roadmap for success. There are leaders who speak their truth, only accept funding aligned to their plans, and who continually measure progress. There are amazing funders who love – genuinely love – their grantees and those served by their grantees. There are funders who provide flexible, general operating support and purpose-driven funding aligned to their grantees’ goals and missions. There are funders who promote great leaders, amplify leader voices, and invest in leaders’ professional development and career development. There are funders who let grantees set the goals, metrics, and methods for assessment to support timely adaptation and learning. There are funders who are in their domains for the long haul and measure their strategies in decades. Sinek helps us understand that all these behaviors act at a higher level at which the expression of care fosters relationship and inspiration. Accountability is to people, not numbers. Grantees of these funders say things like “we work harder on your projects because you’re looking out for us. We work hard because you care about us.” The beauty of relationship-inspired accountability is that it is a two-way street that makes everyone better.
“And when a leader embraces their responsibility to care for people instead of caring for numbers, then people will follow, solve problems and see to it that that leader’s vision comes to life the right way, a stable way and not the expedient way.”
Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last (2014)
Photo by Miikka Luotio on Unsplash