Ownership Accountability Index – The Key to Effective Outcomes & Impact

While much has been written about ownership accountability, much less of it has made it into action & an objective metric to measure and improve. Nevertheless, having worked with numerous high performance organizations, we would like to put up the most self evident of truths, in light of human capability, purpose & potential – without accountability, nothing can get done & without ownership, nothing meaningful can be achieved. (See an in-depth read of how organizations dysfunction, should this fundamental be broken or absent: The Conundrum of Ownership Accountability Part 1, Part 2)

The Brew presents The Ownership Accountability Index, a statistically reliable and valid tool, designed with underlying principles of systems thinking, to measure the level of ownership & accountability within the organization. Balancing between the left brain – right brain nuances, the index, divided into 4 dimensions, which measure certain aspects which are behavioral indicators of the degree of ownership accountability.

The 5 dimensions attributed to Ownership Accountability Index, namely are:

• Effective Action Orientedness: The measure of propensity to take actions across the spectrum of high uncertainty – high ambiguity events to low uncertainty – low ambiguity events. The inherent action bias & the ability to keep moving in the face of situations / circumstances. This factor has a Cronbach alpha of 0.84 (values above 0.7 indicate high reliability) to overall Ownership & Accountability.
• Problem Solving: Measures the psychic capacity & capability, the bend of the mind & thought resilience to see beyond the challenges / constraints & ability to channelize the cognitive & psychic resources with respect to resistance (deviation between expected & reality). This factor has a Cronbach aplha of 0.86.
• Ownership Building: measures the organizational behaviors & practices that generally lead to investedness & commitment of employees in getting the organization to its objectives. Employees with high sense of ownership are often, personally invested in getting to desired outcomes. Infact, employees with high sense of ownership are self-aware, objectively evaluating their contribution in moving the needle & maximizing it. Also see, How to make employees feel that they own their work, HBR 2015. This factor has a Cronbach alpha of 0.81.
• Feedback Orientedness: this measure is indicative of ability to seek out point of views from the team, from the perspective of synergizing & maximizing the hit rate. Quite a times, it often get mistaken for conformance to the system, however, when seen in light with other factors, it helps with degree of creative tension within the team/organization to nudge to the results. This factor has a Cronbach alpha of 0.79.
• Accountability Constructs: this measure is indicative of the degree of accountability measures practiced across the organization across all the levels. This factor has a Cronbach alpha of 0.82

The Ownership Accountability Index is an aggregate measure of above dimensions, each of which is assigned equal weightage, with a direct correlation to higher results vis a vis higher score in Ownership – Accountability Index.