Is It an Accountability Problem? How to Approach the Problem Systemically

When was the last time you were frustrated that someone didn’t follow through on that project as you told them to? And then blamed it on lack of accountability?

I hear this almost every day from leaders, but sometimes it helps to step back and reflect on the environment we are creating, both consciously and unconsciously.

Accountability can just as easily induce guilt and shame as it can motivation. Wise leaders move beyond words to focus on nurturing the right environment so people want to take responsibility, from which accountability follows.

Drive Responsibility With the Right Environment

The dictionary states that being accountable is when we are “required or expected to justify our actions or decisions.”

Conversely, responsibility is “having an obligation to do something or control over one’s job or role.”

In other words, being responsible is self-driven where we feel in control, whereas accountability can feel like judgment.

Instead, leaders can nurture the conditions for trust and safety that drive both individual and team performance. Too often we focus only on individuals, but the key is to remember that we are our environments and vice versa.

As we all know, our organizational environments can get complicated especially with today’s reduction in hierarchy and increase in cross-functional focus. As such, individuals need to be aligned across multiple levels including with their own motivations and drivers.

This paper on culture and accountability in organizations further explains how our cultural tendencies toward individualistic or collectivistic approaches also influence our overall alignment with an organization.

All this means is that accountability isn’t just a matter of setting KPIs and expecting the system to deliver.

How to drive alignment so that people want to take responsibility:

Focus on values and needs. While we have different values, we all have common needs including safety and trust. Just like this white paper on psychologically safe teams describes, we need to tame the ego and align people toward the greater good.

Promote team cohesion. To nurture responsibility, it helps to bring people together so that they become motivated to support each other. Book clubs aren’t just the new corporate classroom. They are also the platform for creating a sense of belonging and facilitating co-exploration.

Trust that teams can fix mistakes. Too often, psychological safety is eroded when KPIs aren’t met and more controls are added. Instead, enable your teams to come up with solutions for how to avoid similar mistakes.

KPIs Within a System

Setting KPIs is like getting your fishing equipment ready and then expecting the catch to simply appear.

Just like leadership, fishing is an art.

You must consider the weather, the tides, the conditions of the water, and any migratory movements.

So, KPIs only work if you consider the environment and how to bring everyone along with the vision. As this article on systems thinking in KPI development further states, the more we reflect on the whole system, the greater the impact on overall productivity.

How to support your KPIs within the culture and overall system:

Cross-departmental alignment. Step away from analyzing teams in blocks and review the value chain as a whole, similar to the lean Six Sigma approach.

Allow team self-determination. The more you allow teams to set expectations and to define the boundaries of their value chain, the more likely they’ll be engaged to own their responsibility.

Focus on problem definition. It’s useful to ask the question “Can I measure it?” Of course, we can’t over-measure, but rather than looking for accountability, focus on what problem you are trying to solve. And then, measure the actions.

How Will You Nurture the Conditions for Success?

It’s easy to throw around words such as accountability and responsibility. Nevertheless, rather than talking about what others should or shouldn’t be doing, let’s look at how we as leaders are influencing behaviors.

Of course, it’s hard to create the right environment, especially because we are different. Nevertheless, deep down, we often want the same things, including psychological safety.

If in doubt, remember that accountability is an outcome. So, if you feel it doesn’t exist, go back to the root cause. What is stopping your team from grabbing ownership?