How well do you define accountabilities when the team is listing out all the work that needs to get done but no names are being put next to the tasks?

Our reader poll today asks: How well do you define accountabilities when the team is listing out all the work that needs to get done but no names are being put next to the tasks?

• Extremely well: We don’t end the conversation until there’s a name next to every item 31.29%
• Very well: We resolve most accountabilities immediately but some slip by 27.61%
• Well: The important items have accountabilities identified but I let the smaller ones sort themselves out 22.70%
• Not well: Only the most important tasks get defined and others tend to languish without owners 15.34% 
• Poorly: I have a really hard time assigning people’s names to tasks 3.06%

Naming names. 80% of you report doing a good (or better) job of assigning accountabilities to specific people when task and project lists are being created. Without visibility into who’s driving something, you run the risk of the task falling through the cracks of “I thought so-and-so was in charge of that.” If you’ve not yet developed the habit of assigning tasks, even smaller ones, to specific people, consider changing that behavior immediately. And just because a task is small, that doesn’t mean the owner should go unnamed. Small tasks can be on the critical path for larger ones getting done. It can be a nasty surprise when a seemingly-small item got dropped and that failure delays or jeopardizes a larger deliverable.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.