Values Integrity Index For Scale-ups Doing Work That Matters

Accountability Isn’t Just A Value. It’s An Operating System.

Ethixly audits whether accountability is just a value on your website or whether your strategy translates into aligned KPIs, clear guardianship, and measurable impact at every level of your startup. 

Why ethixly?

In scale-ups, early performance management systems often fail quietly as headcount grows and complexity increases.

Even when KPIs and accountability structures exist, misalignment compounds rapidly…

  • Goals are set, but they don’t cascade cleanly.
  • KPIs exist, but they don’t connect across functions.
  • Roles are defined, but responsibility overlaps or diffuses.
  • Impact is discussed, but not structurally traceable.

Everyone is committed but commitment is not accountability, and over time:

  • Delivery slows without a clear structural cause.
  • Decisions concentrate at the top.
  • The founder or leadership team ends up manually resolving misalignment.
  • Underperformance becomes difficult to diagnose precisely.

What looks like a people problem is often a systems problem, and systems problems compound with growth.

Ethixly’s Accountability Diagnostic assesses whether accountability is structurally embedded across your organisation – from strategy to function to role. If it exists, it will be visible in your operating system. If it does not, scale – or due diligence – will expose it.

What We Audit

We assess whether accountability is structurally embedded across four layers of your organisation:

Strategic Alignment

  • Are company-level KPIs outcome-focused?
  • Does each KPI have a clear guardian?
  • Are expectations for missed targets defined?

Functional & Team Alignment

  • Do team and departmental KPIs directly contribute to company objectives?
  • Are there conflicting incentives between teams?
  • Is cross-functional collaboration structurally supported?

Role Level Traceability

  • Does every role have clearly defined outcome expectations?
  • Can each role’s contribution be traced upward to company goals?
  • Are expectations used in hiring, onboarding, and probation reviews? 

Leadership & Response Discipline

  • How are delivery gaps addressed consistently across teams?
  • Are performance conversations structured and consistent?
  • Are issues escalated according to process rather than defaulting to the founder?

We do not measure sentiment or perception.We examine operating reality.

Who This Is For

This diagnostic is designed for:

  • Scale-ups between 50–200 people
  • Founders and leadership teams managing rapid growth
  • Teams experiencing execution friction or cross-functional misalignment
  • Organisations hiring rapidly without defined role scorecards
  • Companies where the founder or senior leadership remains the escalation point

If your operating model is still informal in key areas, this exposes where that informality becomes structural risk.

“…But we already have OKRs”

Most organisations we work with do. Having a framework is not the same as having alignment.

We don’t assess whether a performance management system exists. We assess what it’s actually producing – whether KPIs cascade cleanly from strategy to team to role, whether roles have clear outcome expectations, whether delivery gaps are addressed consistently, and whether the founder is still the de facto escalation point for problems the system should be resolving.

OKRs describe intent. The Accountability Diagnostic examines operating reality.

What You Receive

You receive a structured Accountability Architecture Report, including:

  • Assessment of vertical KPI alignment across the organisation
  • Visual map showing how goals cascade from company to team to role
  • Analysis of role clarity and guardianship gaps
  • Review of how delivery issues are addressed in practice
  • Identification of structural risk areas
  • Prioritised recommendations for strengthening alignment

You will understand exactly where accountability holds – and where it breaks.

What This Looks Like In Practice

Digital rights organisation | 60 people | Grant-funded | Europe

The situation: A rapidly growing organisation with a draft values set that management had lost confidence in. Teams were operating without clear expectations. Accountability conversations were happening – but informally, inconsistently, and often too late.

What the diagnostic found:

  • Existing values weren’t specific enough to translate into behavioural expectations.
  • Management and leadership held different interpretations of what the values required in practice.
  • No mechanism existed for communicating standards consistently across teams.

Outcome: Redefined values gave management the clarity to set and communicate expectations to their teams. Accountability shifted from personality-driven to structurally embedded. Standards became consistent across the organisation rather than dependent on individual managers.

 

Your Investment

Scale-up Accountability Diagnostic: For organisations between 50-200 people.

Fixed fee: £15,000

This includes:

  • Strategic, functional, and role-level review
  • Leadership interviews (up to 10 stakeholders)
  • KPI cascade and role traceability mapping
  • Accountability Architecture Report
  • 90-120 minute executive findings and risk review session

Duration: 4-6 weeks from kickoff.

This is a fixed-scope diagnostic. It does not include advisory time. Structural clarity at this stage prevents compounding risk as the organisation grows.

For start-ups of up to 50 people, see here.

What Happens Next

After the diagnostic, you can:

  • Implement the findings internally, or
  • Engage us in a 30-45 day Accountability Implementation Sprint to:
    • Redesign KPI cascades across functions
    • Define role scorecards and accountability pathways
    • Clarify decision rights
    • Embed structured approaches for addressing missed targets

We work with you to embed accountability into the structure and frameworks of your organisation

There’s never a perfect moment to do this…

Structural risk is easiest to address before the next growth phase – not during it. Every month an accountability gap persists, it compounds: decisions that should be decentralised stay centralised, performance issues that should be addressed structurally become personalised, and the operating model becomes harder to audit cleanly.

If you’re thinking “now isn’t quite the right moment,” that’s usually a sign the diagnostic would surface something useful.

Ready to find out where your accountability structure holds – and where it doesn’t?

Book a discovery call to talk through the diagnostic and whether it’s the right fit for your organisation.

Book An Accountability Diagnostic Discovery Call →