Gary Harpst — April 30, 2018 — April 30, 2018
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Building organization-wide accountability is a key element to making your business successful and sustainable over a long period of time. Not surprisingly, all high-performing organizations are moving toward more empowerment, enlightenment — and building their own culture of accountability.
So what is accountability?
To some, it’s something you make people do, as in “making people accountable.” However, as long as you think accountability can be purchased, mandated, or motivated, you’re trapped in trying to create or “force” high accountability — in a low-accountability culture – a recipe for disaster that no one will buy into.
Let’s consider what accountability is, and how you can build an organizational culture that encourages it.
By definition, accountability is being answerable or responsible for something. Accountability opens the door to ownership – not necessarily financial ownership — but certainly emotional ownership, where a person acknowledges they’re responsible for themselves, and also some role or aspect of your organization.
Accountability is not something you “make” people do. It has to be chosen, accepted, or agreed upon by each person within your organization. People must learn to internalize and “buy into” being accountable and responsible. For many, this is a new, unfamiliar, and sometimes, uncomfortable way to work. But as quickly as organizations change these days, the most important and fundamental cornerstone of leadership is learning individual purpose and the meaning that comes from accepting responsibility and learning to be accountable.
To learn to be accountable means coming to grips with an element of “discipline.” Hold on there, I can hear your concerns. Discipline is not a “bad” word. Accountability is the opposite of permissiveness. Holding people accountable is really about the distribution of power and choice. When you have more choice, you can learn to become more responsible. When you become more responsible, you can enjoy more freedom. When you are more accountable, you understand your purpose and role within the organization, and are committed to getting things done – executing the plan – and making things happen.
So, how do you ensure that accountability is a top priority in the culture of your organization?
Only organizations that can clearly identify, articulate, and execute their strategic goals are well-positioned to build organization-wide accountability. Surprisingly this is a part of accountability that leaders sometimes fail to understand. Great planning requires getting the right people in the room and having them collaborate to determine a clear course of action. Saying no to many things and choosing a few. Making people responsible and accountable without an understanding of what you are asking of them undermines the very concept and turns accountability into a blame game and a sense of being put in a position where you can’t win. How can you be accountable to something where the rules are constantly changing? So bottom line true accountability requires an organization that knows how to set priorities and define responsibilities.
Building organizational accountability is no longer the domain of “command and control” approaches to performance management. It is about transforming an organization’s culture to one that engages everyone to maximize and align their potential to shared purpose.
It requires not only a implementing best-practices, it also requires an accountability framework that is practical to use on a daily, weekly, monthly quarterly and annual basis and will hold you and your organization accountable and to help these cultural changes “stick” – and to make the changes last for the long term
In the end, it takes an organization that is ready, committed, and able to accept accountability, and to benefit from the freedom that comes with an accountable culture.
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