Creating a Culture of Accountability - 4 Simple Steps
“Accountability separates the wishers in life from the action-takers that care enough about their future to account for their daily actions.” - John Di Lemme
Accountability is tough... Talk about accountability in the context of the workplace, and it gets even more complicated. And yet, it’s something (almost) every business owner desires, but very few teams possess.
Before we talk about how to create a culture of accountability, let’s first define it. To us, accountability means taking ownership of everything in your realm of influence. You realize and accept that it is your responsibility to make sure what needs to get done… gets done.
The key word we’ll repeatedly return to is, “ownership.” In the words of famed basketball coach Pat Summit, “A sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a team or organization can have.”
The next big question in defining accountability is… who or what are we accountable to? The common misconception is that people are held accountable to metrics, quotas, goals, numbers, KPI’s, etc. For example, if a salesperson’s quota is $100k for the quarter, that’s the number they’re held accountable to. But that’s not the case.
People can only be held accountable to people. A quota isn’t going to be upset with you for not meeting it. Goals and objectives are only the standard in which we aim to hold our people accountable, but it’s important to understand it’s only the person(s) who can drive accountability.
Giving an employee a quota isn’t accountability. It has to go further than that. In our highest performing cultures, people understand they are held accountable to themselves and to the rest of the organization.
So what is accountability? To reiterate, it means taking ownership of everything in your realm of influence. It means not passing blame. It means realizing you are part of a team and have a direct responsibility to help your team succeed. It means understanding your actions need to be focused on the organization’s success and not just your own.
The Falsely Accused…
We talk to quite a few business owners who bring us in because they need help with their “systems and processes” - the falsely accused culprit of many issues and inefficiencies.
During our assessment of their company, we quickly discover a bigger problem. Lack of accountability. Sure, most often the systems and processes do need improvement. However, if we were to just focus on improving those and never truly address the underlying issue, they would likely come back a few months later complaining the new systems and processes aren’t good enough either. As the famous saying goes, “band-aids don’t fix bullet holes.”
Let me give you an example (based on a true story) to which we will return throughout this blog.
The CEO of a $10mm commercial construction company (we’ll make his name Tim) is making his rounds, visiting his company’s project sites, making sure everything is going as planned. It’s 8:30am on a Tuesday morning with coffee in hand as he pulls up to the first site, listening to the Axiom Strategic Consulting Podcast (shameless plug) in his white F-250. Upon his arrival and excited to start the visit, he immediately notices something quite strange...
There are no windows on the building.
He turns his truck off to get out, but first turns and grabs the site plans out of his back seat - wishing and praying that this building shouldn’t have windows. He anxiously double-checks. Sure enough, there should be windows… “How the heck did this happen?” He thinks.
Without hesitating, he jumps out of the truck and runs over to his construction manager (Bob). He’s already fuming from the ears. Skipping the pleasantries, he angrily asks, “Bob, where are the windows?!” Bob panics. He can tell Tim is upset. He quickly realizes he must have messed up.
So Bob responds with an obvious question to buy himself more time to think, “Windows? Are you sure there are supposed to be Windows?” Tim responds, “Bob, look at your site plans! There should be 28 windows! Where are they? How did you miss this?”
Bob, realizing he needs to find a way out, responds, “In our project meeting last week, Wendy never mentioned how many windows we needed, and usually she’s the one who goes through the checklist with me. I’m not saying it’s her fault, but maybe we should evaluate the process to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
So what does Tim do… He goes back to the office, gives Wendy a mean glare as he walks by her desk, and starts revamping his processes to try and make sure a building never gets built again without windows. So who’s to blame? Bob, Wendy, the process?
Before we continue, let’s pause and address one other extremely important aspect of accountability.
A culture of accountability does not ensure mistakes won’t happen and expectations will always be met. However, it does change how we respond. Let’s say, hypothetically, the construction company had an incredible level of accountability and Bob simply made a one-off (but major) mistake. This wasn’t like Bob. The difference with an accountable culture would be both in how Tim addressed the mistake and in how Bob responded to it.
In an accountable culture, Tim would address Bob in a calm, cool and collected way. He would seek to hear Bob out before bursting in anger. He would give Bob the benefit of the doubt. Because… Tim realizes that he’s not perfect either. He realizes that Bob is a great employee. He realizes that how he reacts will help determine whether Tim goes home that afternoon upset and drained, or if he goes home encouraged and motivated to get better.
In an accountable culture, Bob would respond to Tim by taking ownership of the mistake. It may have sounded something like this, “Wow. This is unacceptable and it’s completely on me. I have no clue how I let that slip through the cracks. I know this is a huge mistake, and I’m going to do everything I can to make it right and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Again, think “ownership.” As John G. Miller defines it, “'A commitment of the head, heart, and hands to fix the problem and never again affix the blame."
Let’s also look at what should happen when an accountable employee can tell expectations won’t be met. Unlike the construction story, let’s say Susan, a software engineer for ABC Software, has a 2-week sprint where she has committed to fixing 8 programming errors (bugs). By day 10, things are looking great. She’s fixed 6 of the bugs, with only 2 more to go. However, as she dives deeper into the next bug, she quickly realizes it’s way more complex than originally anticipated. After spending a full day working on it and making little progress, she knows there is no way she’s going to be able to meet the expectations she has committed to.
In an unaccountable culture, when Susan shows up to the next week’s sprint meeting and as they’re recapping previous sprint’s goals, Susan responds and says, “I fixed 6 out of 8 bugs. The seventh bug was way more complex than we originally thought. It should have never been put on my plate in the first place. I’m going to need more time.”
Notice how there was no recognition of not meeting expectations. The “victim” card was pulled. Zero self-accountability occurred, and she left no room to be held accountable. It was “out of her control.”
However, in an accountable culture, on day-10 when Susan gets to that seventh bug and realizes it’s far more complex than expected… What does she do? She immediately informs her manager. She explains exactly what she’s encountering. She works with the team to figure out the best plan of action for moving forward. When they get to the next week's meeting, there are no surprises. There’s no victim card… only ownership.
To recap (don’t worry, we're about to get to the fun practical how-to stuff)....
Accountability means ownership.
People are accountable to people (including themselves).
Proactive accountability means you seek assistance before it’s too late.
Reactive accountability means you do all you can to fix the issue and ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Now that we have a better idea of the stark differences between an accountable culture and an unaccountable culture. Let’s talk about how we create accountability with a few super simple, yet difficult steps.
1. VALUES
If you’ve spent any time with us, you’ve heard us talk about values a lot. To us, they are the first key ingredient in creating accountability. Without values, what standard are we holding people to? Typically, it’s our own uncommunicated subjective standards that go continually unmet.
Values set the foundation for defining the guidelines of a team’s behavior. The floodgates of accountability open up when you have values that are clearly defined, everyone is aware of them, and you (the owner), are driving them...
So what does this look like? Well, one of our values is Truth. We define it as, “we speak truth, even when it’s hard to say and hard to hear.” Our team knows that is the standard. It’s unambiguous. It means if one of our consultants sees toxic behavior from a client CEO, they have to have a difficult conversation with them. They can’t let it slide. They can’t sweep it under the rug. Because of our value of Truth, they have to talk to them. Why? Because that’s the value they agreed to live by when they got hired. That’s the standard for their behavior.
We may hear it worded like this, “we’re holding our team accountable to our values,” but in reality, we’re holding our team accountable to each other by the standard of our values. If that conversation with the CEO doesn’t happen and other team members are aware of it, a difficult conversation will happen with the consultant for not upholding our values.
If you don’t have values defined for your company. That’s the first step. Set the foundation in which you want to build your accountability on.
2. Accountability Starts at the Top
Leadership must empower accountability. How do they do that? By trusting their employees and allowing them to take ownership of their responsibilities.
When an employee truly believes they have the freedom to make choices that will directly affect the success of their work, they will inherently take on more of an ownership mentality (if you have the right employee). However, the opposite is true as well. When a leader micromanages or constantly corrects an employee for not doing things their way, they’ll feel meaningless and unimportant. Naturally, this will lead to a lack of ownership mentality.
Great leadership is infectious. It makes everyone nearby want to get better. When a team believes their leader has their best interest in mind and wants them to succeed, they will thrive. Not only will they become better employees because of it but they’ll also become better leaders. It is not uncommon to see employees start going out of their way to help other employees when they have a great leader. As Joe Dumars puts it, “On good teams coaches hold players accountable, on great teams players hold players accountable”."
If your leadership doesn’t look or sound like this currently, we’d highly recommend seeking help - whether from us or other consultants. We’ve seen companies with incredible potential have unaccountable cultures simply because they have poor leadership. Having the right leaders in place can quickly divert a ship headed for the rocks.
3. Clear Expectations
"If you are building a culture where honest expectations are communicated and peer accountability is the norm, then the group will address poor performance and attitudes." ― Henry Cloud
If you are being unclear about what is expected of your employees, you can’t in return expect them to be accountable.
Let’s pause there for a second. There’s a major difference between clear and controlling. Some people in leadership positions struggle with obsessive controlling disorder. We get it... But expecting your employees to do things the exact way you would is overbearing and unrealistic. It will lead to frustrations and burnout. It’s unsustainable.
When we say clear expectations, we’re referring to explaining what success looks like. For example, an expectation may be that your leaders have monthly 1-on-1’s with their direct reports. That’s super clear. As a leader, I meet this expectation by meeting with my reports monthly. I don’t meet this expectation by not meeting. There’s no ambiguity.
The opposite side of that token, unclear expectations, would be communicating that your leadership should have 1on1’s with their reports when/if needed. When this sort of ambiguousness occurs, I guarantee you your definition of “when/if needed” will be different than theirs.
This is an elementary example, but the principle remains… if we don’t define what success looks like, we can’t hold people accountable to it.
4. Make it a Safe Place to Fail
At first gland, this may sound counterintuitive. The thought may be going through your mind, “if I make it a safe place to fail, won’t I just encourage more failure"?”
Let’s talk about “safe” for a second. We’re not saying you ignore or excuse failure. We’re certainly not saying you enable failure by never having consequences. By “safe,” we mean that you create an environment where it’s better for the employee to tell you what went wrong than not to.
Let’s compare this by going back to the Tim and Bob example. In the scenario where Tim yelled at Bob and burst out in anger, what do you think will happen the next time Bob makes a mistake like that? I can almost guarantee you he’s going to do all he can to hide it from Tim.
But what about the scenario where Tim approached Bob in an understanding and calm fashion? Let’s say Tim decided to spend the day with Bob making sure he didn’t let it affect him too negatively. Maybe he took him out to lunch and worked together to figure out how they were going to fix the problem. With this kind of response, the next time Bob makes a mistake, the first thing he’ll do is call Tim.
We’re not saying you shouldn’t ever have difficult conversations. Sometimes they are needed. Sometimes you have to fire people. But you get to decide if you respond or react out of emotions when an employee fails to meet expectations. When you choose to respond the right way, you’ll foster a culture of accountability.
“When accountability is present, people keep their eyes on a very clear prize. They know what they are working toward and how they are going to get there.” - Henry J. Evans
In closing, creating a culture of accountability is no easy task. On top of that, if you’re trying to fix a culture that has a history of unaccountability, you have even more work cut out for you. Accountability is so tough, because it involves people’s mindset and behavior. Unfortunately, we can’t control those, we can only influence them, and influence will only go as far as the person allows.
Our encouragement to you… start somewhere. Values are a super practical way to begin turning the ship. While they’re not a silver bullet, they are foundational. Have questions about what they should look like? Give us a shout and we’d be happy to provide a simple framework for crafting your company’s values. Thanks for reading!