SE-Radio Episode 340: Lara Hogan and Deepa Subramaniam on Revitalizing a Cross-Functional...

Accountability

Traditional accountability often fails to address the root causes of team dysfunction, leading to either chaos or stagnation. Deepa Subramaniam emphasizes the need for clarity in roles and responsibilities to foster genuine accountability and improve team performance 1. Without this clarity, teams may experience inertia or chaotic activity without meaningful impact. Lara Hogan argues that leaders must take responsibility for setting clear expectations and understanding the underlying issues when accountability falters 2.

The buck kind of stops with you. It's you and your leadership team working together.

--- Deepa Subramaniam

This approach shifts the focus from blaming individuals to creating a supportive environment where everyone knows their role and can contribute effectively.

   

Empowerment

Empowering teams involves setting clear expectations and fostering transparency to enhance performance. Lara Hogan suggests that leaders should clearly articulate desired behaviors and their impacts, ensuring that team members understand their roles and responsibilities 3. This clarity helps prevent communication breakdowns and allows for self-service access to project information, reducing the need for constant updates. Deepa Subramaniam highlights the importance of role clarity, using tools like career ladders and skills matrices to define responsibilities and promote shared understanding 4.

Clarity...doesn't even matter who's doing what. You can come up with totally bananas. Other titles than those three standard ones.

--- Lara Hogan

Such transparency and clarity empower teams to function more autonomously and effectively.