Creating a Culture of Accountability

“I was too busy.”  “Nobody ever told me.”  “The paperwork was wrong.” “That’s how we used to do it.”  “There was a lot going on.”  “I thought I remembered, so I didn’t check.” “Somebody should have caught it sooner.”

Some people seem to have an endless supply of excuses, and positive outcomes get lost in the smoke screen of denial.  On any given day, there may seem to be more finger-pointing than forward progress.  It’s frustrating to deal with and wastes a huge amount of time.  How to change it?

It’s tempting to look at chronic excuse-makers and label them as slackers, misfits or worse.  But the truth is people repeat behavior that is working for them.  The key to changing the behavior is to create a culture where individual accountability rules the day and excuse-making simply becomes something that is regarded so poorly that people actually want to avoid doing it.  Creating and sustaining a culture of accountability takes energy input and consistent behavior, starting with top leadership and cascading down to front line supervisors.  Here are some steps that are simple in practice – the key is in the execution.

1.      Drive out fear.  Paradoxically, creating a successful culture of accountability means maintaining an environment where it’s safe to take acceptable risks and make reasonable mistakes.  Accountability is not “hammering” employees when they make a mistake.  Practicing what Ken Blanchard called a “Leave Alone – Zap” style of leadership, where employees hear nothing except when something goes wrong, won’t get the accountability job done.  The resulting climate of fear leads to excuses and finger-pointing.  Shouting or making sarcastic comments and walking away is not accountability.  Avoiding getting caught becomes a survival mechanism and problem solving goes out the window. 

2.      Make talking about performance an every-day occurrence instead of an exceptional event.  In his excellent book “It’s OK To Be The Boss,” author Bruce Tulgan states that there is actually an epidemic of under management going on in American organizations.  To avoid unpleasant confrontations with employees, especially those of different generational backgrounds, many leaders stay away from frank, clear discussions regarding performance until a situation has reached a point where drastic action is called for.  By then, talking to an employee about his or her work always means a crisis situation has arisen.

Tulgan says that employees don’t need to see the boss all day, but they do need to see the boss every day.  In other words, one of the secrets to having engaged employees is to have engaged supervisors.  Effective supervisors talk like coaches.  They ask people how things are going.  They give praise and encouragement.  They correct problem behavior when they see it rather than waiting for problems to grow or hoping they will go away.  Keeping the focus on the work itself makes talking about performance something that happens as part of a normal day at work, rather than only when there is a big problem.

 3.      Set clear expectations.  Make sure that people know what the standards are for good job performance, day-to-day workplace conduct and attendance.  Don’t be vague, hesitant, or expect that “people should use common sense” or “they should know better.”  Communicate standards that are specific, measureable, achievable, relevant to the employee’s work, and have a definite time frame.

 4.      When corrective feedback is necessary, don’t sugar coat it or let a problem performer off the hook. Make sure the underperformer understands the expected performance, his actual performance, and the problems caused by the performance gap.  Get agreement to change behavior from the employee in specific terms, not a generality like “I’ll try harder.”  Then follow up and coach.  Feedback supports change; an absence of feedback encourages falling back into old habits.  And, of course, document your discussion if the situation has disciplinary overtones. 

 As stated earlier, creating a culture of accountability requires energy input and consistency from leaders at every level in the organization.  However, once it becomes a normal way of working, things go a lot more smoothly.  People become self accountable, take responsibility for their own actions, and supervising takes much less time and energy.  That’s the ROI on the investment in time and energy to make it happen.