In my
28-year career in leadership and team coaching I have enjoyed and struggled with supporting organizations
in implementing accountability practices. The struggle is partly rooted in the
power of fears for consequences, in the power of mistaken beliefs, and in the
power of ingrained practices that are harming accountability more than they are
helping. I presented on this topic at the Minnesota Project Management Institute, the Rochester Community Technical College, the Southern Minnesota APICS chapter, the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Continuing Legal Education, Hennepin County, and many more organizations and associations from which I’d like to share some of my reflections on
accountability. I trust they will help you think critically about what accountability is
and is not, reflect on how to act accountably, and decide how to best hold others accountable
in a way that aids personal learning and company-wide improvement.
Here are some of my reflections on accountability:
Talk is meaningless chatter when no one is
held accountable.
Rationalizing
and justifying are human tendencies resulting from the need for self-protection.
They stand in the way of acting accountable.
Ticking
off a box with procedures and saying “I’m sorry” do not constitute examples of acting accountable.
When
people are afraid to speak because they anticipate punishment, there is no limit
to the risks and problems they are unwilling to disclose.
Vague
expectations and unclear boundaries of responsibility and authority make it
impossible to hold people accountable.
Attitudes
such as Wait and See, Tell me what to do, It’s not my job, and Cover Your Tail
are crippling in your quest to increase accountability.
Punishment
and blame teach employees that they better not take risks, they better not make
mistakes, and more so: better don’t get caught and cover your …
The future is
uncertain and you can't change the past. You can however learn from past experiences if, and only if, blame and
punishment make room for detailed reviews and true learning.
Many
organizations and their people suffer from a habit of victimization resulting
from a belief that circumstances and other people prevent them from achieving
their goals.
Blame and
fault-finding slam the door in the face of a culture and practice of
accountability.
Characters such as
the gossiper, the sugar coater, the cover-up artist, the quitter, the blamer,
and the sand-bagger all hamper accountability (Greg Bustin in his 2014 book on accountability.)
If all you measure, monitor, and reward are
results, your staff will be tempted to bend the rules and to avoid accountability
for mistakes and failure.
You can do yourself and your company a huge
service by stepping outside of your safety tent and challenging yourself and
others on any lack of accountability.
Trusting that some of these reflections are meaningful for your specific context I’d like to close with a quote from American writer and futurist Alvin Toffler:
“The illiterate of the future are
not those who cannot read or write.
They are those who cannot learn,
unlearn, and relearn.”
