Money Matters: Key Strategies for Building Fiscal Accountability

As a business owner, part of your job is understanding the organization’s financials. While it may not be your strong suit and you may lean regularly on your CFO for support, a solid understanding is required for driving this key indicator of business health.

That said, your team of direct reports, not to mention all your other staff, may not have a decent grasp of the numbers–what they are, how they’re measured, and what they mean in the context of total business health. You may wonder, does that matter?

Sure it does. While some employees will need to know more, and others less, everyone can benefit from transparency around the most vital facts and figures. More importantly, they need to know how their performance and productivity impact those facts and figures because whether they realize it or not, their performance is tied to the bottom line.

Here are a few solid tips to build greater financial accountability among your entire team:

Hold yourself accountable to financial clarity and responsibility. Financials can be very tough for many people to understand, so recognize that it’s your job as a leader to understand the true picture of your company’s health and communicate it effectively. Instead of inundating them with endless spreadsheets and fiscal jargon that will confuse and shut brains down, explore ways to make it all easy to digest, such as sharing the numbers within a storyline or presenting them visually. Regardless of your creative approach, ensure that you share the key financials regularly and sustain transparency around your organization’s health, whether that’s on a shared daily dashboard or in your monthly accountability meetings.

Don’t sugarcoat the truth. If there are financial challenges, avoid keeping your team in the dark. You don’t have to inundate them with details, but you do need to be honest about the need to take action, such as setting new goals and strategies, and then assigning ownership to those goals and strategies. Being honest about fiscal challenges and needs may create some worry and fear among your people. However, if you address the issues with a good plan and a system you can trust to execute that plan, this will build trust culture-wide and get people focused on strategies and solutions, rather than worries and fears.

Connect the dots between roles and results. When setting fiscal goals and developing strategies, ensure that your people know exactly how their unique roles relate to any key aspects of financial health and the overall financial wellness of the company. For example, if a target gets missed, how does that impact the bottom line for the quarter? Every person and every team aligned to and engaged around that particular goal needs to understand how their job relates to its achievement and any associated fiscal outcomes. It is crucial for them to grasp this without feeling targeted themselves. Using a proven, objective accountability system like the MAP Management System™ keeps people focused and productive without personalizing performance.

Ready to build fiscal accountability with yourself, your team and your organization at large? Take action and get results. Contact MAP today!