Making Accountability Part of Every Field Visit
There is no secret formula for a successful team or store. That being said, one trait a team must have to be successful, is accountability. We’re talking about follow through -getting things done! Without accountability there is no drive, no sense of urgency to evolve or be proactive. It’s pretty simple, leaders who have the ability to measure performance and enforce accountability are more likely to do just that -measure and enforce.
Knowledge Is Power
The first step to infusing your field visit process with accountability is understanding that people can’t and won’t be held accountable for what they don’t know about. That’s why transparency and accountability go hand in hand. Cloud-based technology, like we use in the Action Card app, makes transparency a built-in part of the field visit process.
Scoring and review outcomes can be accessed in real-time, by the appropriate people. When location managers are granted this information, they know exactly what they’re being held accountable for. In turn, they are able to be transparent with their staff, creating a culture of accountability. Because the information is immediately accessible, the manager can provide relevant direction in a timely manner, making the review immediately actionable. With the traditional, paper-based field visit process, we were seeing lag times that diffused any sense of urgency.
Make Cutting Corners a Non-Option
Accountability isn’t intrinsic for all of us. In fact, accountability is something that many teams need help with. The natural instinct for many of us, sad to say, is to cut corners. When we get to college, what do we do? Gain the freshman fifteen, drink too much, eat Taco Bell for every meal and get about four hours of sleep each night. Why? We don’t have anyone looking over our shoulder. We by no means condone micromanagement as a driver, but there always needs to be a system in place to foster accountability.
The photo capture feature that the Action Card app uses, makes cutting corners in the field visit process a virtual impossibility. Digital pictures of issues revealed during the field visit process become part of the report and are only marked as reconciled once photo evidence proves the issue has been addressed. No cutting corners there.
A Collaborative Culture is Key
As information trickles down from the top, it becomes diluted, the context is stripped away and by the time it gets down to the people who actually interact with your customers, there is very little left. While our technology supports collaboration in the field visit process, it can’t make it part of your culture. That being said, the Action Card app allows the field visit manager to spend less time with their face in a clipboard and more time building relationships, coaching and walking the walk when it comes to creating a collaborative environment in the workplace.
Field visits become an educational experience when everyone is involved; discovering why we do this, exploring why we do it this particular way, examining what makes this important. That is being collaborative, contextual and effective.
Would you like to know how you can infuse your teams and stores with accountability and follow through? To learn more, take a quick demo. Then, give us a ring, we’d love to talk..