One of the biggest challenges of organization building is last mile accountability.

Which, in my opinion, starts with last mile expectations.

What is it that I expect this individual to be focusing on?

Not multiple things.

Just one thing. At one point of time.

And what is the outcome I expect from it?

It’s supremely hard to get to this.

In a small setup, everyone ends up doing everything. And while that’s necessary, it rarely brings in accountability.

So when things fail, one doesn’t know what to fix. Who to fix.

In a large setup, everyone hides behind the organizational chart. There is excess and it’s easy to be missed, if one lays low.

So when things fail, it’s cover your ass time. One again doesn’t know the root cause.

Here is a good question to ask – that helps see the problem clearly.

“What one failure will make me fire this person?”

If you are unable to answer this, or there are multiple failures as a response to this question – you are in trouble.

The goal is to find that one metric that someone is responsible for. And the company cares about.

“Here are Multiple metrics” is the wrong answer. “It’s hard” is the wrong answer. “Too early for us” is the wrong metric. “Don’t know how to do it” is the wrong answer.

If you don’t know why you would fire someone, then the person should be let go off today.