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Accountability Group

Terms of Reference

Foreword

Overview

Forming the Accountability Group

Authority Group Objectives

Activities

Accountabilities and Responsibilities

Meetings: Membership, Frequency and attendance

Suggested Agenda

Standing items

Review of these Terms of Reference

Foreword

These terms of reference are for reference only and should be amended by the service leaver and the accountability group and then agreed mutually,prior to being formally used.

Accountability Group - Terms of reference

Overview

The Accountability Group is a 2-way forum to help keep the individual (Service Leaver) who is leaving the Military on track with their plan to transition from the UK Armed Forces back to civilian life.

Forming the Accountability Group

It is the sole responsibility of the Service Leaver to nominate the members of his, or her Accountability Group. The Service Leaver indemnifies all parties other than themselves from any liabilities, and understands that the accountability group is a support mechanism to help him or her deliver their ‘leaving plan’. The service leaver has ultimate control but must understand that they alone are responsible for their actions following any recommendations from the Accountability Group, including any other third party.

Authority Group Objectives

The key objective of the Accountability Group is to ensure that any plan that is agreed is SMART and most of all it is aligned to the most efficient path to help the service leaver achieve their goals in civilian life.

SMART Object – Explained

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting: Specific

What exactly do you want to achieve? The more specific your description, the better the chance you will have of achieving your goals. S.M.A.R.T. goal setting clarifies the difference between 'I want to be a millionaire' and 'I want to make £150.000 a month for the next ten years by creating a new ‘Widget’.

Questions you may ask yourself when setting your goals and objectives are:

  • What exactly do I want to achieve?
  • Where?
  • How will I break this into bite-sized chunks?
  • How does my plan align to the end objective?
  • When do I want key tasks to be completed by?
  • With whom?
  • What are the conditions, dependencies and limitations?
  • Why exactly do I want to reach this goal?
  • What are possible alternative ways of achieving the same?
  • How will I know when I am done? What does success feel/look/like?

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting: Measurable

Measurable goals mean that you identify exactly what it is you will see, hear and feel when you reach your goal. It means breaking your goal down into measurable and tangible elements. You'll need concrete evidence. Being happier is not evidence; not smoking anymore because you adhere to a healthy lifestyle where you eat vegetables twice a day and fat only once a week, is.

Measurable goals can go a long way in defining what exactly it is that you want, too. Defining the physical manifestations of your goal or objective makes it clearer, and easier to reach. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting: Attainable

Everything is attainable if you break your journey down into bite-sized chunks. If you wanted to drive from the UK to Australia, you wouldn’t even attempt to do it without breaking the journey into sections.

Is your bite-sized chunk attainable? That means investigating whether the end goal really is what you want? Does it align to your ‘why’? You weigh the effort, time and other costs your goal will take against the profits and the other obligations and priorities you have in life.

There's nothing wrong with shooting for the stars; if you aim to make your department twice as efficient this year as it was last year with no extra labour involved, how bad is it when you only reach 1,8 times? Not too bad... But remember, anyone can eat an elephant, just one mouthful at a time.

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting: Relevant

Is reaching your goal relevant to you? Does it align with your purpose, you're why?

Do you actually want to run a multinational, be famous, have three children and a busy job? You decide for yourself whether you have the personality for it, or your team has the bandwidth.

If you lack certain skills, you can plan training. If you lack certain resources, you can look for ways of getting them.

The main questions, why do you want to reach this goal? What is the objective behind the goal, and will this goal really achieve that?

You could think that having a bigger team will make it perform better, but will it really?

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting: Timely

Time is money! Make a tentative plan of everything you do. Everybody knows that deadlines are what makes most people switch to action. So install deadlines, for yourself and your Accountability Group, and go after them. Keep the timeline realistic and flexible, that way you can keep morale high. Being too stringent on the timely aspect of your goal setting can have the perverse effect of making the learning path of achieving your goals and objectives into a hellish race against time – which is most likely not how you want to achieve anything.

Activities

The core activities of the Accountability Groupare:

•Making mutually acceptable decisions/recommendations relating to the Service Leaver’s plan and approach

•Ensuring that the decisions align with the plan,and the agreed vision

•Making decisions/ recommendations based on the analysis of options

Accountabilities and Responsibilities

The Service Leaver

  • Commits to working with the Accountability Group to formulate their leaving plan
  • Commits to receiving honest and candid feedback and then acting positively on it.
  • Commits to providing pre-agreed evidence of progress to the accountability when required.

Members of the Accountability Group

  • The Accountability Group is there to support the service leaver in their transition to civilian life and therefore must give candid and honest feedback on progress
  • If there is more than one individual, other than the service leaver; then with the aid of the service leaver, the Accountability Group will nominate a chairperson who has overall accountability for keeping the Service leaver on track
  • The Accountability Group must be an active participant in creating the services leavers plan
  • The Accountability Group must use the plan to measure progress at every meeting
  • The Accountability Group must take responsibility for actively keeping the service leaver motivated and on track
  • The Accountability Group must take responsibility for actively looking out for the physical and mental welfare of the service leaver throughout the transition and give help and advice where needed.
  • Any member of the Accountability Group will sett aside the pre-agreed amount of time for the Accountability Group to be effective.
  • Maintaining a Decisions Log of all decisions made, and those in progress, with supporting rationale
  • Reviewing and evaluating the outcomes of decisions and recommendations made to feedback into future tasks.

Remit

The Accountability Group’s remit is strategic. It helps the service leaver make decisionsregarding their leaving plan. These are limited to;

  • Add as necessary

Meetings: Membership, Frequency and attendance

  • Meetings can either be face-to-face, or by phone / Skype / etc
  • There has to be a minimum of the service leaver and one member of the Accountability Group present for a meeting to be viable
  • Accountability Group meetings are chaired by ****
  • Meetings will be organized a week in advance by the Chair, or service leaver. This has to be decided from the beginning of the relationship
  • No member is allowed to cancel once committed, unless in the case of an emergency.
  • Members of the Accountability Group are to make themselves available for meetings
  • Other attendees will be dictated by the agenda

Permanent attendees

Role Title / Name
Service Leaver
Chair
Member
Member
Member
Attendee

Any of the above would include individuals acting up in these roles or interim.

Suggested Agenda

  • Go through and update previous actions and decisions

from thelast meeting - Chair

  • Report on progress against the plan and pre-agreed tasks – Service Leaver
  • Discuss what went well, what could have gone better, any questions or issues and any commitments for the future. - All
  • Review the plan on what’s next - All
  • Agree tasks to be complete by next meeting
  • Service Leaver to commit to completing tasks
  • Accountability Group Commit to helping the Service Leaver
  • Agree format of next meeting (face to face, or phone call?)
  • Any other business

Standing items

  • At every formal meeting,The Accountability Group will review any minutes from previous meetings and the action list.
  • On a regular basis The Accountability Group will review or provide the following:
  • Opinions and recommendations to the service leaver on progress
  • As agreed

Review of these Terms of Reference

These Terms of Reference will be reviewed at least 6 monthly, to contribute to the continued effectiveness of the Accountability Group and its interaction with the service leaver.

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