Successful teams cannot exist without responsibility: high performance and responsibility go hand in hand.

Accountability begins with understanding the truth and continues with the thoughts, words, and actions of everyone involved in your organization. in my book, Win Responsibly: The Secret Language of High Performance Organizations, I explain how accountability is the key to long-term, sustained organizational success. To create a culture of high accountability, an organization must be able to identify gaps in accountability.

Execution fails when there is a lack of accountability, process and language to translate strategies into reality. If you’ve ever experienced a failure in a relationship or project, you may have discovered that, in hindsight, clear results may not have been properly communicated to all players, so there were gaps in accountability.

Identify accountability gaps

High responsibility cultures are something you can see.

To illustrate this, let’s take a professional basketball player, an NBA star who, at one point in his career, declared, “I’m not a role model. Parents should be role models.”

We’re not using his name here because that was silly for any star athlete to say. Because, despite what he thought, there were thousands of children admiring this NBA star, wearing his jersey number and throwing sneakers until nightfall to become like him. In the context of accountability, even though he was a leading scorer and exciting to watch on the court, you could see that the athlete was not a star in the Culture of Responsibility.

Now, let’s turn the dial to 1993 and the confrontation at the Mount Carmel Complex of the Branch Davidian led by David Koresh in Waco, Texas.

On April 19, 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno gave the FBI permission to remove Branch Davidians from her residence, using tanks to blast holes in the walls of the building and then spraying tear gas into the residence. Agents then fired more than 350 “ferret” grenades into the building, but none of the Branch Davidians obeyed the FBI’s order to leave the residence. Then a fire broke out and 76 Branch Davidians perished, including 27 children.

As news of the confrontation and resulting deaths broke on the evening news, Janet Reno stepped up to the microphone at a White House news conference. “I made the decision,” she said. “I am responsible. The responsibility stops with me.” Her words were remarkable, and noticeable, because you rarely hear politicians talk this way. At the time, she was the first US Attorney General and quite new to the job at it. However, faced with a tragic and controversial situation, she stepped forward and was held accountable. You could see that Janet Reno was exhibiting a culture of accountability that was the model for her entire organization.

So what does a highly-accountable culture look like? Accountability cultures do not emerge overnight. Culture evolves from one person or event to another. A common denominator is that in cultures of accountability, everyone holds themselves accountable for their commitments in positive and productive ways.

As mentioned above, if you’ve ever had a failed relationship or project, there’s a good chance it failed because the specificity was lacking up front and the expectations weren’t clear. That relationship or that project failed because there were “accountability gaps.”

Accountability gaps are like potholes in a road. Gaps are holes that need to be quickly filled with specificity before further damage is done. Just as potholes in the road must be filled quickly with paving materials before the holes become large enough to damage cars on the road, a “liability gap” exists when specificity is lacking.

Take poor Max, who was hired by a big company. His boss told him, “Max, we’re glad to have you on the team, and as long as you do a good job, your employment with us is solid.” Unfortunately, his boss didn’t tell Max specifically what a good job was like (he counts this as a blip). When Max led the team on a major project, the boss said, “Give me the final report as soon as you can.” Once again, did that mean tomorrow or next week? Max did the best he could, but the report was several days late in the eyes of his boss (another blip).

When Max was fired, his tenure was riddled with potholes, lacking in specificity and growing deeper and causing more damage as the weeks and months passed.

Max failed because the specificity in each expectation and task was lacking. Nothing was clearly indicated on the front end… and when there is no specificity on the front end, Max was set to fail.

But, let’s not throw Max’s boss under the bus just yet. Max also made a big mistake. He “assumed” that he knew what the boss meant when he told him to “do a good job” and complete the report “as soon as he can.” Assumptions dig deep potholes and are big contributors to responsibility gaps that lead to a failed project or relationship…and this breeds bad feelings, which turn into a vicious cycle of dysfunction.

Accountability is a two-way street. If you complete a task that was not specific and someone is disappointed with your work, you are the one who is considered unreliable. You have passed the point of no return. It is too late for expectations. It’s “gotcha” of the worst kind in every way.

It is the role of both the sender and the receiver of the information to ensure that all the gaps are resolved before the task begins.

use specific language

Avoid vague language like “As soon as possible,” “I’ll get to work,” “I’ll do my best,” or “I’ll turn it in by the end of the day.” These types of ambiguities are part of the Glossary of Failure… and each of these vague phrases increases the chances of failure of the relationship or the project.

Just as the three most important rules of real estate are “location, location, location,” the three most important rules for creating a culture of accountability are “specificity, specificity, specificity.”

Practice making commitments using the Language of Responsibility by saying, “I’ll do it on date ‘X’ at time ‘X’.” Instead of saying, “We’ll have the project done by the end of the day,” tell your counterpart, “I’ll be done by Tuesday, June 13 at 10am, your time.”

Using the language of specificity will increase accountability and strengthen the culture of responsibility within your organization.

say it once

A culture of responsibility also helps eliminate redundancy.

Focusing solely on a problem and not the solution wastes resources on redundancy. Everyone knows what the problem is… your energy and resources should be focused on solving the problem. It can be productive to express the problem once, but then it’s time to move the momentum toward a solution to improve your position. Redundancy is not found in many job descriptions.

A good example of leadership momentum would be a conversation like this:

Manager: “I’ve noticed that Phil isn’t getting his assignments done on time…and it’s becoming a real problem for me.”

You: “I realized that too. What is causing it? Where have we not been able to set specific timelines and expectations?”

Noting that failure can fall on the shoulders of leadership, he looks in the mirror for solutions.

State the problem once, eliminate redundancy, and move on to the solution.

reverse the momentum

The language boost can be reversed… from anyone in the organization.

Here is an example:

In 1975, a movie was made about a gigantic killer shark. Title–jaws.

After this shark has eaten some tourists, a town meeting is called which is attended by the mayor, police chief, city council and some influential businessmen.

Many see no other option but to close local beaches to prevent more attacks and more bad publicity. However, businesses in the community want to keep them open. This is the “high” season for tourists and closing the beaches now will bankrupt most of the community.

The discussion goes back and forth between the two factions for several minutes. No ground is being gained and neither side is willing to give an iota or find a compromise. The meeting is deadlocked. The top echelon of the city’s organization chart is stuck on the problem. The discussion is getting louder.

Then the tearing sound of nails being dragged across the board interrupts the discussion. Suddenly the room is silent and they crane their necks to see a simple fisherman sitting at the back of the room, near the blackboard. When he has the attention of the room, he quietly offers, “I can kill that fish for $6,000.”

That pronouncement, made by the somewhat obscure and low-key fisherman (who probably wasn’t on anyone’s org chart), changed the entire momentum of the meeting…and also changed the direction and focus of an entire town. The simple fisherman had assumed the role of leader, and from that moment on, the momentum of the town had shifted towards forming the team that would kill that shark.

That’s the way it can work in any situation. The leader’s job is to reverse the momentum of negative interactions, and anyone can be the leader regardless of her position on the org chart. He can reverse the momentum by applying his skills and energy towards a new and positive outcome. When a conversation is from the past (with the exception of celebrations) you are probably focused on a “problem” or, perhaps, placing blame. However, by shifting momentum and focusing the dialogue on the future, he is now working on a “plan”.

In short, it has the power to identify accountability gaps during interactions and fill them with specificity. You have the power to identify when an interaction “goes negative” and reverse the momentum so that everyone involved in the interaction benefits!

To find out how well you and your organization are doing in preventing accountability gaps, take the free Accountability Assessment.

Extracted from the book by Henry Evans, Win Responsibly: The Secret Language of High Performance Organizations (Cornerstone Leadership Institute, 2008).

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