Quality and Innovation

When you hear the word accountability, what do you think of?

In cultures with low psychological safety, accountability can be a scary word. Who’s going to whip the horses harder to get them to go faster? (This is particularly frightening if you’re one of the horses.) As long as there are people assigned to the positions of whipper and whipped, you’ve got accountability. Right? No way.

True accountability – that is, accountability with psychological safety – is not only different, but tremendously beneficial to everyone in an organization! Most of us, at our core, want to do a good job. Without clear lines of accountability (and expectations set early and often around it) performance will suffer, systems will fail, and trust will erode.

When no one is clearly and specifically accountable for anything, everyone becomes accountable for everything. This drives a stake into the heart of prioritization, and gets personally exhausting very quickly. It’s a recipe for distress, disillusionment, and burnout. Why?

• Accountability is a belief. Anyone can believe that you are accountable for a particular task, initiative, or outcome… but if you don’t share their belief, or if you aren’t aware that someone else believes you are accountable for something, one (or both) of you will end up very disappointed.
• If you’re accountable for something you have no control over, you’re bound to disappoint someone. (Think about how you’d feel right now if I told you that you were accountable for fixing global warming this year, and you’d be measured on how successful you were at reducing the average surface temperature of the planet by a degree.)
• If you’re accountable for an outcome but not held to accountability, the rest of your colleagues will notice… and you will lose credibility and respect. If you’re a leader who doesn’t hold others accountable, you’ll also lose credibility and respect.
• If you’re not accountable for something you’re the most qualified to be accountable for, your organization will not benefit in the ways it could… and you’re more likely to feel marginalized, dissatisfied, or left out of opportunities to add value.

Accountability helps us get real about what we CAN do for one another. For everyone in your organization to get the most value out of accountability, remember these elements of the CAN acronym:

• Conversations are not commitments. You stopped somebody in the hall, let them know you’re waiting on a new feature, and that it’s really, really important because you need it next week! Next week comes and goes, your feature is still missing, and now you’re mad (and losing business). Did the accountable party let you down? No, they didn’t… because accountability requires commitments to be formalized and prioritized in some way. While not all accountability requires legal or contractual arrangements between parties, there needs to be a way to clearly identify the basis for accountability.
• Accountability aligned with leverage catalyzes results. In contrast, accountability without ownership leads to disappointment. Have you ever been accountable for something you have no way at all (even indirectly!) have a way to control or influence? It feels the same way as trying to cook dinner but discovering that you’re missing a key ingredient! If all the ingredients are available to you, and you have control over how they’re used and the tools to use them, you’re set up for success. 
• No expectations without consent. Accountability is not unilateral: it means that expectations are set, negotiated, and agreed upon by the involved parties. (Accepting a written job offer is a great example of giving consent to expectations… your employer has defined your role and responsibilities, and your acceptance indicates that you consent to those expectations.)

Accountability means I know the vital few outcomes I’m expected to ensure, and I’ve consented to realizing them. Accountability means I know what resources to ask for, what tradeoffs to make, and what boundaries have to be set and pushed. Accountability is a shared belief – an understanding of what is needed from multiple parties so that a goal can be achieved, and the consent to move forward in that agreement. 

Bottom line, accountability is the order that slices through organizational chaos.