The Role of Accountability in Strategic Success

Jonathan Morgan 0:00  

If there was a fire and you had to go figure out something related to this, like, Who's the one person you would reach out to? That's the person who ultimately is accountable for that? Right? You can think about all the different accountability methods, the racy or other aspects of like, the different people involved, but at the end of the day, who is the one person that you're going to go to that's the ultimate accountable person. And then there's going to be a cascading waterfall accountability. That goes down from that. But that's the piece that people miss the most, because then they're trying to say, Oh, well, it's these five people. It remembers group projects back in the day, no matter how long it's been since you've been in school and you've got a whole group, and it ends up being nobody does the work, or one person does the work, because it's not clear to find who's doing what. That is, unfortunately, part of human nature that's going to bleed into your key initiatives. It's not clearly defined, and it's got to be clearly defined, or else you can have nobody do the work until the last week. And most of the things you can't just pull an all nighter to finish a large scale initiative at the end of the day.

Jonathan Morgan  1:17  

Welcome back everybody to another episode of the strategy gap. Today we're going to be continuing the conversation we've been having. We've been having around our recently released report, the state of strategy execution. If you haven't listened the last few episodes, go back and listen to those. We had one really introducing some of the key components of it. And then two episodes, we talked about the first key pillar of alignment and leadership. Last episode, we talked about collaboration. In today's episode, we will really be focusing on the topic of accountability. So accountability very much a buzzword in the space of strategy and execution for really business and organizational leadership as a whole. But today we'll be focused really on all the ins and outs of accountability, how you can get it to help your plan and plan execution, how you can think about different methods of accountability, and then also really important piece that's often overlooked as the role that accountability plays in individuals motivation and keeping them tied to the success of your organization. After this episode, we'll continue on the other pillars, which is progress tracking, continuous improvement and data and technology. But of course, today, we'll be focused on accountability before we dive in. Just a reminder, if you haven't listened those other ones yet, at least go back and listen to the one on the overview of the state of strategy execution. We'll also have links in the description to the overall report here, a lot of great information that came out of this survey, through surveying leaders in the strategy space and great conversations that we're going to continue to have that will enable you to focus more on, how do we improve these principles internally in our organization, on the accountability one, Joe, before I go into some statistics. So when you hear accountability, what's the, what's the first thing that comes to your mind within this world,

Joe Krause  2:58  

strictly in terms of planning? I mean, ultimately, accountability is, if we're looking at it from a more negative perspective, it's people feeling that they're being monitored for progress, right? So I'm being held accountable for these results. Sometimes people take that to a place where it means big brother is watching. So that's the glass half empty. But the glass half full is that we only have so much time in the day, and we all have to divvy up the work to the people that are most inclined to do it or have the skillset to do it. And being accountable means that you're saying, I will do this by the time that I said I'm going to do it so that we all collectively win. So those are the two ways that I typically see the word accountability manifest either it makes the person I'm talking to wince a little bit because of past experience where accountability was used as a stick, or in some situations, accountability, especially in high performing organizations, is used more as a carrot, because we're all rowing together, and it's a good thing. So your best, your A players want to be held accountable, because there's really no downside to broadcasting the success or the learnings that you had from something versus straying away from

Jonathan Morgan  4:01  

that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, we'll dive into the stats here as we go in. One thing I'll mention is there were so many questions and stats about accountability where it made it really difficult to decide what are the ones that ended up making the cut for this report. So we'll go through some of those. Obviously, there's a lot more to it. We'll sprinkle in a lot of insights throughout the way. And starting with the first one here, it's honestly probably one of the most obvious stats that was in the entire report, but still important to call out, and it was really the fact that 95% of the leaders that were surveyed saw improvement in their strategic plan completion and the progress of their goals when there is clear accountability. Again, sounds like the most obvious thing in the world, but I think it's important that to state that this is very important, you have to keep people accountable. If you don't, you're not going to see as good of success. So instead of focusing just on the statistic itself, I want to focus more on some of the methods to hold people accountability that were mentioned in that we've seen success. With organizations. Because I think, Joe, you can certainly speak to this, but it's very clear that holding people accountable and having methods for that is important. But we've spent enough time with organizations and in organizations that people say they've got to figure out they definitely don't. So what are some ways that accountability means so much there's good perception bad perceptions. When you boil it down to the fundamental ways that it's used, like, what is the most effective ways that you see accountability actually used within an organization?

Joe Krause  5:30  

Yeah, it goes to basics once again. But assigning an individual to each item that's responsible for an item in your plan is number one. Numero uno has to be done every single time. I still am not actually, I am shocked when I see new plans from folks that send them over to us to either review before they become a client, or as they are a client. The majority of the time, one person per item is not the norm. It's usually a group mentality, or nobody listed as all at all. And so, first and foremost, find a person, a single person's name, to put next to every single item, then you have to have regular ways that that progress is going to be reviewed. So if you have weekly leadership meetings, that's a great place to do it. If it's more of a monthly affair, you have to do it, and it has to be a part of the agenda achieve it. We're a smaller company, but we have a weekly meeting, and everybody reports on their different department. Updates, headlines, KPIs project updates, happens every Tuesday, no matter what. Unless we have like 90% of the team on vacation, it's going to happen. And if you say you're going to do something last week, you're going to be called on it. To say you had a to do from last week. Where do we stand on it? And so that consistency is what sometimes is lacking. Where you might have that meeting two months we're going to do things different this year. We're going to have our monthly review and here's what we're going to do. And then by the third month, you don't schedule it because people are on vacation. And then the fourth month, it's really busy right now, and then all of a sudden, you're not having it anymore. So have individuals assigned to each item, person closest to the work, and have regular review meetings weekly is great for fast moving organizations, for more project based things, and then at least one once a month get together to talk about the strategic plan. But, I mean, those are things that I see. But Jonathan, have you seen anything else that's applied regarding this type of way to get people engaged in the work that they're doing?

Jonathan Morgan  7:18  

Yeah, I think similar to your point, the aspect of it that people have the hardest time with is like, well, it's not this one person that's doing all the work, right? There's other people doing it. And so how am I going to pick which person is? And the point that's always very obvious when you build it on is, like, if there was a fire and you had to go figure out something related to this, like, Who's the one person you would reach out to? That's the person who ultimately is accountable for that, right? You can think about all the different accountability methods, the racy or other aspects of like the different people involved, but at the end of the day, who is the one person that you're going to go to that's the ultimate accountable person. And then there's going to be a cascading waterfall accountability that goes down from that, but that's the piece that people miss the most, because then they're trying to say, Oh well, it's these five people. And I know Joe just finished his MBA not too, too long ago. It's, I remember his group projects back in the day, no matter how long it's been since you've been in school and you've got a whole group, and it ends up being nobody does the work, or one person does the work, because it's not clearly defined who's doing what. So that is, unfortunately, part of human nature that's going to bleed into your key initiatives. It's not clearly defined, and it's got to be clearly defined, or else you're gonna have nobody do the work until the last week. And most of the things you can't, you can't just pull an all nighter to finish a large scale initiative at the end of the day.

Joe Krause  8:39  

Yeah, Rutgers was especially cool because they made the group projects even more realistic. Where the first semester, you were not able to change your groups. They made them for you based on where people kind of live, to make it easier for study groups. But yeah, as you can imagine, that first semester was a little dicey, just for the same reasons we're talking about who's going to do what, and then second, third, fourth semester, you're able to pick your own group. And those were smooth sailing, that picking your own group was an easy way out. I mean, not to say that I took, you know, we had a little bit of horse trading there, but that first semester was probably the most realistic example of what we deal with every day, which is, you don't get to choose who you're with and what you're what you're working on. So setting those roles up early, stating that everybody has to do what they're supposed to do, and give very clear deadlines work for the most part. I mean, there were a few times where it was late nights because somebody didn't do what they were supposed. What they were supposed to do. But the goal was, if everybody's doing what we asked them to do, which is like, let's say, have a group of five, and four people are always doing their stuff on time, the fifth person usually comes along, and if they don't, they're the first person out the next semester, and now they're on an island. So there was a little bit of a carrot and stick that was used, which is what you have to do with strategic planning, carrot and stick. You can't just use one all the time versus the other, because if it's all carrot and no stick, then people are going to take you seriously. And if it's all stick, no carrot, then all of a sudden that people are going to be like, this is punitive, and I don't want to be a part of it. So a mix of incentives and social pressure is a great. Kind of a politically correct term, right? Nobody wants to have their name on the marquee for something bad, which is, I didn't do what I was supposed to do. That usually corrects itself after the first time of being slightly embarrassed in front of your peers. I mean, I hate to bring it back to that, but especially if your only job was to make a status update and you couldn't muster the ability to do that in a week, there probably should be a little bit of public square shaming on that just to get you where you need to be. That's just my opinion, though.

Jonathan Morgan  10:24  

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think the other reason this is important, like continuing on with the actual statistics pulled out of this, is that when accountability is not clearly defined, 81% of the organizations surveyed said they experienced delays in strategy execution. So it's essentially the opposite of last statistics, like, not only are you gonna see improved goal progress, but if you don't have it clearly defined, there's gonna be delays. So it's honestly you're getting the negative effect on the opposite side of it, whereas teams that had clear ownership and responsibility defined are two times more likely to stay on schedule and achieve their goals. So I think you related to this. The other trap that I'll see organizations often fall into is this, all right, we've, we've agreed accountability is important. We've, we've picked that one person. We've defined some form of way to collect updates, right? It's a system like achieve it that's automatically collecting them. It's a status update meeting. All the different methods have pros and cons to them, but the trap that I see them fall into is they request these updates, they pick that person, and then they don't actually have that regular cadence for talking about it, Joe, you mentioned it before. I have some weekly cadence or monthly cadence or quarterly cadence to review it. I feel like a lot of organizations don't do that enough. And what ends up happening that I've seen is you're asking people to make updates or sit in progress meetings, and then they're seeing nothing out of it. And the natural tendency of individuals is they're they're going to care about what. They're gonna make their own decisions about what to care about, and if something's never talked about publicly, they're gonna stop participating in it. So what are your thoughts on that aspect of accountability is, how do you make sure it's actually real, not just who's actually assigned to this How are we using this information and making sure we're instilling that accountability across the team?

Joe Krause  12:07  

I've seen success in like, scheduling these things out. What I find happens sometimes is that we're like, oh crap, we got to have that meeting. And then they look at calendars and no one's available, and they just, you know, they have that happens once or twice, the meeting doesn't get scheduled. So let's say it's January, and that's the beginning of your planning. Beginning of your planning year. They the ultimately, what happens is, then the in January, you're saying to yourself, let's have those meetings, and then you'll maybe wait two weeks before the meeting to schedule it. Schedule at least six months out, if you can, like, make it. Make a line in the sand, saying Tuesday, the third Tuesday of the month at 10am is when we're going to have this and then get those calendar invites out. It allows you to kind of box out of it on the calendar to ensure that it actually happens. Will that always work? Right? Because ultimately you have to see, are people having travel, or are they having some situation which is impeding their ability to join? Is the time of day not working, because sometimes you might schedule something and all of a sudden there's now a standing meeting for something else that's happening. You got to get smart with it and realize that we can't be by Wednesday at 10am every third Tuesday. Let's move into the afternoon on Thursday, find the sweet spot and then schedule that out and do what you can to not cancel the meeting, even if you have two or three people that are critical, that can't make it, record it, send it to them, even have them record a little video with teams and zoom whatever you end up using. It's very simple to fire up a meeting where it's just you and the video recording, maybe your status update, and then have those played during the meetings. I've seen that being done to great effect as well. But avoid canceling the meeting. You do that once or twice, that meeting will never be rescheduled again. So that is where things that's basically what I've seen work. But Jonathan, have you seen anything else in terms of making sure that the meeting actually happens? Because that's the biggest issue. It's just making the space. Yeah,

Jonathan Morgan  13:56  

I agree with everything you said there. Honestly, I feel like the bigger issue at times is not, hey, can we make this meeting happen? It's, How do we make sure that everyone else knows that this meeting is happening and so that the people that are outside of the room that they understand the importance of it, right? Because if you have 100 people across your organization, or 1000 people across your organization that are responsible for these various initiatives and responsible for providing updates, and those then roll up to 10 or 15 or 20 people that are in these conversations. Sure, it's important for those 10 to 15 people to have a consistent meeting, but it's probably more important to find some way to show that all the other 100 or 200 or 1000 people understand why this is important and how it's being discussed. So that's obviously very, very difficult to have a regularly recurring meeting with all of those people. Maybe if you have some form of all company meeting, or all hands meeting or town hall, or whatever you call it, there's at least some mention of that. But honestly, one of the simplest things to do that's super important is just. Finding some way to show publicly across your organization, or even out into the public outside your organization, that this is what we're working on. This is how it's progressing, and this is why it's important that could be a dashboard on your website, a dashboard on your own internet. It could be a report that's sent out automatically every month or every quarter, something that's going to reinforce to that, you know, individual contributor that's responsible for one small aspect of your plan. They see that report, they see that dashboard and say, hey, look, that's, that's what I'm working on. That's what it's contributing towards. I now understand that this is being looked at. So I'm going to be, you know, part of of this, and continue to understand why that's important. I don't know what other aspects of that you've seen Joe related to, you know, how do we get the people that aren't those 10 people in the room to understand and like be held accountable to this initiative? Yeah,

Joe Krause  15:51  

I mean, ultimately, that's where the mission and vision comes into play. Hopefully, you can tap into the reason why your organization exists and why the plan is important that should get most of your people over. I mean, that's that is a place where you have to rely upon that, because you are asking people sometimes to do a little bit more than they're used to. And some people will latch on to that, but sometimes a lot of them won't. We mentioned this before on the on the podcast, but the idea of organizational development, there's a lot of bell curves that exist. And the one that always struck me from the perspective of having like, win hearts and minds. If you think about the standard distribution, the right tail, the top 10% no matter what you ask them to do, they're going to do it. You probably know who they are. The people that are like, Yep, I'll do that. I'll change the way I work. I'll make my updates. I'm ready. They're always like, Johnny on the spot, your future leaders for current leaders. And on the far left tail, you have people that no matter what you ask them to do, they hate it. They won't do it. They're they're stamping their feet. The middle 80% though, can be swayed by either 10% and who's getting the attention from the people they perceive that are in leadership, right? So if you're spending all your time trying to pull somebody along that doesn't want to make their updates, versus taking that same time and lauding the person who's making the updates and putting them on a pedestal and things of that nature that would, you know, time is better spent putting people on a special pedestal, saying this is what we expect, and be more like them. And the other 80% will come along. And to be perfectly blunt, the bottom 10% the one that won't do anything. There's other options for them as well, which might be outside the organization, if they just simply can't get with the program, because you can't have that 10% detracting from the greater good.

Jonathan Morgan  17:25  

Yeah, I think the reason that aspects extremely important, and again, I hate to always go back to the stats. This reason for this conversation is that 90% of employees felt they're more empowered and motivated when their work their expectation and accountability measures in place. So it's not just the bell curve that Joe talked about, but it's those that actually understand that accountability. It's often thought about in the negative way. But the positive aspect of it is that if someone can really feel motivated, empowered and connected to these aspects of the planet they're responsible for, they're going to be more motivated. They're going to produce better output. And to Joe's point, if you can focus on those 10% that are really going to be motivated, they'll pull up the other 80% or at least those people will look like, hey, I want to, I want to be more like that person and not like this guy over here that's complaining about everything. Maybe you

Joe Krause  18:15  

have those to take that as a leader. You have to make sure that you're making an environment that actually makes one of people do these things right, and people do these things, right? And people aren't going to intrinsically want to go above and beyond. I mean, it sounds cliche when you're hiring somebody, I'm looking for a self starter person that's going to get out there and do it. I mean, yeah, you're going to find some of them, but for the most part, people are thinking of their role as a job, and anything extra, you're going to have to at least drag them along a little bit. And it's these, we're talking very low cost things. You can have an award. You can have a recognition, an email that comes out if you're in public service. There could be a recognition from the mayor to extraordinary planning, whatever the heck's it needs to be like those small things that don't cost anything go a long way to get people along. And if people keep seeing like their coworker getting some sort of praise they're going to want to gravitate towards that even if they're kind of punching the clock, so to speak. So you as leaders have to just, you can't just stamp your feet and say, Why does nobody care about this plan? It's you have to create an environment that they want to. Because most of the time, they'll tell you, it's not that I don't care about the plan. It's that I have a day job and that for me is the most important thing, what you're asking me to do I deem as extra and unless you either take something off my plate or make it interesting where this is something I can work on that gets me recognition or comp changes or promotions or something to that effect, like I'm not going to care about it, unless you give me a good reason. So that good reason doesn't have to cost a lot, but it's on you as leaders to give everybody a good reason to care?

Jonathan Morgan  19:41  

Yeah, and I'd add one thing beyond this is, you know, we're talking about the importance for the actual end employees and the contributors themselves, but a lot of this actually sits on leadership as well as and those responsible for defining or architecting or building the plan. And that's how do we think about the profile of our team and of our employees? Leaders to understand who needs what type of accountability and who needs what type of structure. You know, Joe talked about when you're hiring someone the self starter, right? Those are the people that you know you can rely on, right? You're going to give them an idea. They're going to run with it. They're going to build a strategy. They're going to come to you with questions, they're going to build out the plan. They're going to go do it. Those are the people, obviously, you need to continue to grow and develop to make them those next leaders. But there's probably a larger portion of your team that doesn't fit into that bucket, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, right? I think oftentimes people think that's a bad thing. There's one of these books behind me really focuses and talks about the different profiles of employee you have, your your your superstars, right? Those are the people that we just talked about. You know, you can give them anything they're going to run with it. They're going to run with it. And then there's the other aspect of a very strong employee that refers to as a rock star, right? This is somebody that is solid as a rock you know, you can get out of them, but they have different goals and ambitions, right? They don't necessarily want to climb the corporate ladder. They're not going to go above and beyond for trying new things, to climb a ladder. They're going to be very good at very predefined aspects that have been there's clear expectations, clear accountability, clear understanding of timelines and progress. And I think a track that a lot of leaders will fall into is they don't separate those two types of people. They say, Well, look, Jake can do this. Why can't Sarah do it or Bob's having a hard time here, but Joe is really just running with this sort of initiative, right? They try to bucket these people in the same aspect, but accountability, when done properly, is thinking about, how does each person need to be managed, and how can I enable them and empower them to ultimately be successful in this initiative. So I know this, we hadn't really talked about this in the context of accountability before, Joe, but how do you think about like a leadership role in defining the right type of accountability for the teams?

Joe Krause  21:52  

Yeah, I lived this. My first job out of college was with a large pharmaceutical company, you know, top five based in New Jersey, which most of them seem to be dream job. And for the most part, you always kind of had a start in the sales role, because that was like, like, UPS very similarly, like the CEO used to deliver packages like they want to make sure you kind of learn the business as you go. So in the good old days before me, the 90s, when it was the heyday, it was like, if you spent more than two years in that role, you were looked at like, what are you doing? You should be in headquarters. You should be a manager. And that kind of then held over into the 2000s when I joined, where things got a little bit more austere. I'd say you could do you couldn't do as much in terms of working with clients. You had to be much more by the book, which was all I knew. And they still had the same mentality. Like, why won't you go into headquarters? Why don't you become a manager? Don't you become a manager? But there weren't as many opportunities. So it was this weird, like, holdover mentality that you were something wrong with you if you wanted to just continue this job. You know, for people that maybe have been in that role before, you're on the road in your local territory, in your own car, you never had to go to an office. You made your own schedule. It was very kind of a nice kind of way to be able to work. And some people enjoyed that so much they wanted to retire in that role. So it took them about five years after all this to finally then carve out a path for those people to feel fulfilled and have progression where there was different leveling for that role, where they could make substantially more money. There's ways to do sort of leadership within the local territory, versus going into headquarters because people didn't want to move, and it really increased retention and overall output, because those people were then felt like they were not less than that. They really made a conscious choice to do what they wanted to do, and they were rewarded for it if they were good at it. So a good kind of tangible example of what Jonathan was mentioning, it was like one of the smartest moves they made in a very kind of uncertain time, where it settled the troops and people that wanted to go up the ladder. By all means, here's your path. And for those that love your job and want to do this to the best of your ability until you retire, here's your path. It basically didn't cost them anything to do, and it made everybody happy. So there you go. Yeah,

Jonathan Morgan  23:58  

and I think it's honestly probably more important of a conversation for today's world than ever, when you essentially got four, almost five different generations in the workforce, and all of them have like, different aspects that really come into play with this particular topic. Joe and I are both elder millennials, so right? We we fall into that millennial stereotype at times, which you know, was beat up on 510 years ago, I think now is largely accepted, but

Joe Krause  24:24  

I've only been through like seven world events that would define a generation. I've only been through like seven of them at this point, being born in 84 but yes, resiliency is sometimes overlooked from the millennials. I'd say it's been a it's been an interesting road, right?

Jonathan Morgan  24:38  

But, I mean, we grew up on a road without technology, and then adopted technology. And so we have that, like understanding of what things are like before instant gratification, and then with the aspect of instant gratification and with all the technological changes. And the perception is that millennials want this instant gratification of kind of continuing to move forward. And like we. Wanted to progress their careers. You've got that right, but then you've still got boomers in workforce and Gen X, and now we've got Gen Y and Gen Z, all of those have very different personality types when it comes to, how do I hold this person accountable? Hold this person accountable, and also, what do they care about for progressing their career? It's an interesting time. I'm fortunate within my team, I don't have someone across all five of those generations, but I'm sure there are people that are listening that do, or at least four of them or them themselves are in as a part of that. So I know what are your thoughts on? I don't want to get too deep into the the millennial conversation here, but what are your thoughts on, thinking about accountability from different generations and how to leverage that? Yeah,

Joe Krause  25:42  

I'm old enough to remember having no cell phone, right? So that was cell phones came when I was in seventh grade, and you adapt. But yeah, ultimately, you just have to figure out what makes everyone motivated in their own way. And you can't have a one size fits all approach to your teams, especially if there's multi generations that are there. So you just have to realize that you're not going to make everyone happy. That's not a possibility. Sometimes, if your job, if your goal coming into a role, is that every six months, you're seeing progression, most companies don't have that, unless you're working on a really early stage startup where maybe there's three people and you you strike, strike it rich, and you have a product that has product market fit, all of a sudden, all these new roles appear. Then, yeah, maybe. But your average role. I mean, for the most part, even if you look at an investment bank, some of the most high paying jobs in the on the planet Earth, they have like, five levels of analysts, and then five levels of VP, and then Director. See, still, the only industry that a director is lower than a VP, right? But you have to climb the ladder, about what's this. Call it 12 rungs before you're a managing director. That's the top of the pyramid, right? And then those roles, even if you're the best analyst possible, every two to three years is your window to get to the next rung. They work you hard. They really just make sure that that's the their mentality. But nobody comes into it year one saying, look at all the great work I did. I need to be an analyst too. It just doesn't happen. So setting expectations first and foremost, saying here's what you can expect working here, if there's a new division that opens, yeah, there's a possibility there, but that's probably less likely. Organically, we're going to grow. And as that happens, we try to hire from within, and if so, you might be in running for that. But every six months, a promotion, new money, whatever it is, this is not something that is realistic. So having that expectation set during the interview process leads to hopefully less tears when they come on board thinking that that's the norm, and especially in today's environment where you know, looking at, are we in a recession? Are we already in one? Are we out of one with what's going on? It's even harder for those employees to say, like, just hold on and be patient, just because every business is kind of holding their breath and waiting to see what the next shoe see what the next shoe is to drop. That makes it very difficult for employees right now, so you as the employer or the leader have to probably do a better job during one on ones, just being frank, not being disrespectful, but being frank about what the what the macroeconomic and microeconomic conditions are, and what that's leading to, from a decision perspective, people just want to feel that they're being thought of, and that's all we can do sometimes as leaders,

Jonathan Morgan  28:05  

yeah, and I think the aspect that's important is there's really two ways to think about holding different generations, different types of profiles, accountable. There's How do I interact with this person, one on one? So for example, I know the individuals on my team, I know what drives them, what makes them scared, what different techniques, from an accountability standpoint, work better or worse with each one of them. As a leader, you can't think about that across the entire organization, right? You can't say all right. We have 1000 employees. Here's all 1000. This is the way I need to deal with each one of them. That's never going to work. So you have to then make sure before you make these key decisions, what are the impacts that this could have the different types of individuals throughout our organization, right? The cliche one recently is all the return to office, right? You have people that grew up working in an office environment, COVID. They went remote. And I was saying, Okay, we're with we think people are going out to get their groceries or to do laundry for 30 minutes during the day, we need to get them back in the office, and right there have this rigid format, as opposed to thinking about what are the trade offs that may or may not be happening, what might happen to those employees that we're trying to bring back in the office, and what would the replacement cost of being if those individuals left at whatever level of skills that they bring to the team, those are so often overlooked. It's like we have to do this, because this is how I did it, how we need to do it, how leadership things would be done, as opposed to getting a true scan of all the different profiles of individuals and thinking, what are the ways that these people can be held accountable at the end of the day? Because, to be frank, the return to Office movement is all about accountability and the thought of people not doing their work at home, and so what are the other ways that we can ensure that people are being held accountable that may not be returning to the office, or maybe in some other way, that we can actually just have clear communication about expectations in the workforce? So I. Know, we weren't planning on going here either. But what do you think about, you know, different ways here on whether it's return to office or accountability techniques to think about across not just individuals, but the organization as a whole.