Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe a data-driven approach to driving accountability for behavior change at the individual level, i.e. the “Development Check-In” (DCI). It has become an accepted reality that 70 per cent of all organizational change efforts fail. The reasons cited are many and include such factors as a lack of focus on the hard and soft sides of the organization, misaligned reward systems, disengaged leadership and new interventions introduced at the expense of existing efforts. While all of these are important, we argue that accountability is the most critical element for ensuring an intervention sticks and delivers lasting results.
Design/methodology/approach
The DCI reflects the principles of agility and accountability, and has been used with great success in a large consumer products organization. The paper begins with an overview of the need for feedback tools to drive accountability, followed by a discussion of the design and process of the DCI.
Findings
Highlights from the authors’ use of the customized process to measure and reinforce leader capability development over time are then provided. The paper concludes with some recommendations and additional considerations.
Originality/value
Behavior change is not easy and requires focus, direction and a way of measuring progress. The DCI is an example of an agile multi-rater feedback accountability mechanism that provides leaders and managers with targeted and positively oriented feedback to support their continued development. This type of tool can be used beyond leadership development for a variety of types of interventions because it is based on sound organization development principles.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.