Accountability Pays

Most employees, when they hear the words “you’re accountable,” get a sinking feeling in their stomach, because most of the time, at least in the American culture, that word is associated with an event that has PASSED and some blame is forthcoming for lack of performance. With a decade of downsizing, rightsizing, and cost-cutting behind us, people are particularly sensitive.

Yet blame-letting runs counter to creating an environment of accountability because it precludes the desire to discover and reveal mistakes. Finding mistakes should be engrained in the fabric of the organizational processes because identifying them means being able to fix them.

Business systems are moving methodically toward the capability to make employees accountable. Activity based costing (ABC) is a discipline that enables companies to account for every penny associated with product or service production or creation. It has become sufficiently prevalent to be considered an industry. The biggest software purveyor of ABC methodology is ABC Technologies, Inc. which has partnered with IT giant SAP to integrate accountability into business systems.

The Balanced Scorecard, authored by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, is widely applied as a strategic planning methodology by many consultants including this author. The notion of “double loop learning,” from behavioral scientist Chris Argyris, is incorporated in the system-wide application of embracing participation in getting results. Double loop learning fosters change by making ongoing feedback a mechanism of the system.

A hierarchical approach to strategic planning works fine as long as the vision is clear from leadership where the organization should end up and what desired action will result in those objectives being met. But in today’s business climate, that is rarely the situation. More than empowering managers, double loop learning requires them to question their assumptions and reflect on whether the stated objectives and actions are consistent with current evidence, observations, and experience. It assumes a changing environment will require changing objectives and subsequent actions.

This is a cultural shift which can only occur through leadership. In nature, a plant will sacrifice a leaf to save the plant. This is the equivalent of identifying the offending person with their mistake and lopping them off as one would a dead leaf. Typically, by the time a mistake is discovered it is after an extensive cover-up campaign by the offending individuals and more damage has been sustained than if the original error had been revealed upon discovery. In many situations, hiding from discovery was far more expensive to the company than the originals sin. This is the organizational equivalent of plant life.

But let’s assume that the human species is higher up on the evolution chain than plants. Without the fear factor that blame-letting creates, the manager whose decision was poor could tell the truth immediately upon discovery. An adjustment could be made, both individual and organization could have learned something, and an improved system/situation would set an example for others who err or who take a wrong turn.

It boils down to creating a culture of safety, where everyone, not just the senior executives, are recognized for taking responsibility.

To create a culture where accountability will thrive, leaders can:

1. Acknowledge their failings publicly within the organization, setting the example that it is o.k. not to be perfect

2. Create opportunities to review strategic objectives and the assumptions that drive them, and make these opportunities available to everyone. This can be done in stages, or through the levels of the organization, so that peers are evaluating these issues with their peers.

3. Request volunteers to be accountable for projects from the outset, so that accountability can get a good reputation.

4. When there are wins, celebrate these publicly and recognize the connection between being accountable and having the celebration. This reinforces the notion, “nothing ventured, nothing gained” as a replacement philosophy for “the blame game.”

5. When there are mistakes, recognize those who spoke out for the timeliness of their acknowledgement, and redirect the activities or the objectives, whichever is appropriate. But do not penalize the person who volunteered to be accountable. They WERE accountable, and that was what you as the leader wanted.

This way of being in an organization is more conducive to the safe kind of environment that everyone would want to work within. As writer Carolyn Myss, Ph.D. says, “This world is not perfect, or haven’t you noticed?” An evolved organization would improve incrementally and grow with fewer scars than those in the past.

If you have examples of what I am saying here, please post a comment!