“I talk to a lot of business owners and they all say the same thing…”

When I first got started in business coaching, my mentor often used to say “I talk to a lot of business owners and they all say the same thing…”. Then he would quote what business owners all say, something like “Our business is different” or “How do I get them to think like an owner?” At first I thought this was a tactic to make himself appear more elevated and wise, but when I started talking to a lot of business owners myself. I quickly realized that I kept hearing the same things too. Many business owners are saying the same things. I started writing down all of their statements, and now I have a whole list of statements I’ve accumulated, but one of these statements really sticks out…

“We are not a culture of accountability”

Why be a culture of accountability?

Imagine for a moment that we have a top caliber employee named Brenda. Now Brenda is on point. She's exemplary in her performance and behavior. She is a model employee. Brenda loves the company and longs to be part of a high performing team. We know that high performance players value discipline and teamwork. Because of this, we have set our values as “Discipline” and “Teamwork”. We try to live by these values and encourage our employees to do the same.

Now Brenda has a co-worker Johnny. Johnny always shows up a few minutes late for work. It has just become the norm. You can count on it. If Johnny is on the schedule, you can expect to see him walk in a few minutes late, wander back to the coat room to store his things and eventually take his place on the line. Even though we have talked with Johnny about his being late, he continues to do it. It has just become a way of life with Johnny. Most of the time Johnny is a good teammate and does a decent job, but we know with him, he is always going to be late.

The problem with this is that Brenda is looking for us to hold Johnny accountable to our values. When Johnny and Brenda took their roles in our company, they agreed to our values. We trained them, and this is what we expect from them. However, being constantly late does not show discipline or teamwork. If we were to ask Brenda if we are a culture of accountability, she would likely say “no”. If we were to ask Brenda how does she feel about our culture? She might begin sighting her frustrations about favoritism, drama, resentment among employees and leadership, perhaps even hostility because employees harbor bad feelings toward Johnny and the leaders.

Here’s the thing, . If we don't hold Johnny accountable to what he said he would do, over time Brenda is going to lose trust in us as her leaders. As Brenda loses trust and confidence in our leadership she will likely leave for a better, healthier environment. If you don't want to lose key employees you should become a culture of accountability.

“If we don’t hold people accountable, key employees will leave.”

What does that mean to be a culture of accountability?

If you look up accountability in the dictionary it says “being accountable”. Big help, I know. When you look up accountable, the definition is “accept responsibility for one's actions”. With those definitions, I would contend that being a culture of accountability means “ a culture of being responsible for our actions”.

“Accountability is being responsible for one’s actions.”

With that in mind, being a culture of accountability would mean that the entire organization would hold one another responsible for their actions. It would mean that it is OK for people to ask each other about their actions, and if their actions are not consistent with their responsibilities, we could encourage each other to be more responsible.

Brenda should feel comfortable asking Johnny why he is always late. She should feel supported for encouraging Johnny to honor the values of discipline and teamwork. In addition, Brenda should feel comfortable and even encouraged to ask leadership to honor their values.

Truly being a culture of accountability might mean asking Johnny to be responsible for his actions – somewhere else, since he is not being responsible for his actions here.

Asking and encouraging are two means of accountability, but there is another. Another form of accountability is to adjust responsibilities when new information arises and then sharing that adjustment with the team. When we first set out our plans and responsibilities, what we thought at that time seemed like a good idea, however as we traveled down the road, we learned that things weren’t going to work out the way we thought. Do we keep going even though we know it is wrong? Or do we adjust. You have to adjust, but you also have to be accountable to sharing the change in plan with the team.

Let's go back to Brenda and Johnny. Perhaps Johnny has an unusual circumstance where his source of transportation is scheduled 5 minutes later than the agreed start time. While Johnny and I may have agreed that this is acceptable, as a leader, I have to share this adjustment with the rest of the team.

What does it mean to be a culture of accountability? Being responsible for ones actions. Asking and encouraging others to be responsible for theirs and sharing when the plan is adjusted.

“Follow up, encouragement and adjustment are key. ”

How do we become a culture of accountability?

There is way too much information on this topic for me to pack into this short article. Here is one recommended step you can take toward becoming a culture of accountability.

Define your core values. We believe that core values are a set of not negotiable rules which you live by. We all have them as individuals and as a company. The issue or opportunity is that many companies may have core values written and displayed on the wall and they look great, but are they really being applied? Or perhaps you don’t even have yours defined or displayed.

“Core values are not negotiable rules you live by. ”

If you would like to know what your company core values are, look at who is getting promoted. Why are they getting promoted? This will identify the things that your company values. Do we promote Johnny or Brenda?

In order for your team to thrive, we need our Core Values clearly defined, trained and then for everyone involved to be responsible for their actions of following them.

We need to be bold in asking our team why they are not following them,
bold in encouraging them to follow them,
and bold in asking them to leave if they will not be responsible enough to follow them.

Summary

You should become a culture of accountability:

Define your core values.
Hold people responsible to following them.
Adjust them as you learn and share those adjustments with the team.

Get Help

If you would like help discovering your core values, we have a number of ways we can help here at the Balanced Leadership Center both for individual and company values. Values are the key to a healthy environment and company culture. Let’s get yours defined.

Help with my values

other great resources:

If you would like an exceptional book on this topic please take a look at The Program - lessons from Elite military units for aiding and sustaining high performance leaders and teams by Eric Kapitulate and Jake McDonald.

You can also learn a lot about core values from the featured leaders interview I did with Brent Brinks - President of Buist Electric.

Accountability

three questions: