Introduction
Almost everyone has accountability issues in life. We do not like to be held accountable by our boss, colleagues, subordinate staff, coach or even parents, children, siblings, friends and least of all by spouse. Even though accountability extends beyond genders, generations, age groups and all spheres of professional, personal and public life, we hate the idea of being held accountable, for the possibility of a letdown because we may not done something as effectively as we should have or expected from us.
While we want increased accountability from others, we flinch at the idea of showing it ourselves. Some of the managers and commanders, for this very reason, avoid holding even their younger colleagues accountable because they evade friction and difficult conversation. Therefore, even though every organisation wants all its members to demonstrate accountability, only a few are able to sustain the culture of accountability. The consequences of ignoring responsibilities can be disastrous.
Most people view accountability as corrective, punitive and disciplinary action. It is used synonymously with responsibility, blame worthiness and liability. Sometimes accepting accountability also means admitting you made a mistake and punishment may be the result. Government has accountability for decisions and laws affecting citizens, an individual has accountability for his behaviour and actions. After all when things are sailing smoothly people rarely ask who is accountable for this. When the commander or senior manager says, “I want the highest standards of accountability”, we perceive it as, ‘you will be held by neck and heads will roll’.
There is thus a negative connotation attached to accountability. On the other hand, ‘Ownership’ sounds so positive. These are however two sides of the same coin. Ownership and Accountability is a very interesting subject. We shall first understand the meaning of accountability, its necessity and advantages, thereafter dwell on Ownership, compare the two and lastly highlight measures to create accountable organisations and build ownership environment.
Accountability
Webster's defines ‘accountable’ as ‘Subject to having to report, explain or justify; being answerable, responsible’. This confession-oriented and powerless definition suggests what we have already observed - accountability is viewed as something that belittles or arises as a consequence of poor performance, problems or failure to achieve targets.
There are far too many ways in which accountability has been explained world over. A simple, relevant and comprehensive definition of accountability is as follows:
Accountability simply means ‘Being responsible for decisions made, actions taken, and assignments completed or something you are supposed to do. Every employee or manager is accountable for the job assigned to him. He is supposed to complete the job as per the expectations and inform his superiors accordingly. It involves either the expectation or assumption of account-giving behaviour. Accountability is the liability created for the use of authority. It is the answerability for the performance of the assigned duties.’
If accountability is merely an account of how we have discharged our responsibilities, then both, positive and negative feedbacks are essential. The problem is with our eyes. These are intrinsically trained for fault finding and our mind focuses only there. Instead of saying, “The wall is nicely painted, just that small patch if it is redone or retouched it will look better”, we end up saying, “who left that big patch, poor show”. This results in de-motivation and sulking and the employee may end up leaving the jobs due to lack of appreciation.
Accountability is a management control process used in organisations, wherein positive or negative feedback as applicable is given for a person's actions. Depending on such a response, the person might feel reassured or need to correct his or her error.
Necessity
Accountability is essential for the healthy and successful functioning of an organisation. If there is no accountability, some individuals can get away with poor performance or behaviour. Others may begin to believe that poor conduct is permissible and begin to resent the low-performing employee and his manager because they have to shoulder more work to make up for their teammate’s deficiencies. If the ‘problem employee’ is not addressed, the team will perceive it as favouritism or weakness, which can be de-motivating for everyone. Overall performance may thus start declining as one thing will lead to the other. Lack of accountability is bad even for the employees who are not performing well. A salesperson who knows that he is the only one who has not met his sales goal may feel ignored, discouraged and devalued and quit due to lack of push to improve or encouragement and guidance to improve.
Other factors necessitating adopting accountability culture are:
o It is crucial for ensuring high performance within an organization.
o It addresses both the organization's expectation of the employee and the employee's expectation of the organization.
o Accountable employees help maintain a positive culture, vision, and ethics.
o A sense of accountability to the team creates an incentive for individuals to help each other.
o Accountability helps identify who is responsible for ensuring that outcomes meet goals and creates incentives for success.
o Accountability builds transparency; one of the main pillars of good governance.
Benefits of Accountability
Even though it is tough to create accountability environment and accept personal accountability, it has many advantages.
Builds Trust Accountability enforces or increases commitment, willingness to admit and dependability. This enhances mutual trust between managers, employees and peer groups as they are more likely to keep their word.
Promotes Ownership When people realise that organisation values their work and they impact the team meaningfully, their own sense of belonging enhances.
Inspires Confidence Right kind of support, constructive feedback, consideration of members’ suggestions, balanced autonomy at work and challenge to find solutions enhances their skills and confidence.
Improves Performance Accountability eliminates the time and effort wasted on unproductive and distracting activities. Secondly, losses due to mistakes and errors get avoided by putting the right people on the right jobs.
Business Benefits Accountable employees deliver numerous business benefits: like better execution, lower employee turnover, creativity and innovation, revitalize the business character, strengthen competitiveness and improve the quality of products, services and responsiveness of organizations to the needs of environment.
Personal Benefits Firstly individuals are likely to have healthier relationships with friends, family, and colleagues. Children, who were encouraged to take personal responsibility for their actions have more positive social interactions. Accountability can also save time and money. People who take responsibility for their actions speak up and look for solutions whenever they see a problem. This prevents the situation getting worse and stops costs and delays from escalating. It can boost chances of promotion. When one shows, senior colleagues that he is dependable, they mark him as someone with leadership potential.
Some of the directly visible benefits of accountability are:
o Everyone reports on time for work and stays until the end of the work day or shift
o Performs all assigned tasks
o An increase in employees feeling empowered and competent
o Surge in creativity and innovation
o Making good ethical choices
o Making morally and legally upright decisions for performing their job
o Making choices with team members in mind
o Supporting the mission of the company
o Supporting co-workers, supervisors and clients
Ownership
There is a new definition of accountability. It actually covers all the facets of ownership beautifully.
‘A personal choice to rise above one's circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary for achieving desired results—to See It, Own It, Solve It, and Do It.’ This definition includes a mindset or attitude of continually asking, "What else can I do to rise above my circumstances and achieve the results I desire?" It requires ownership for making, keeping and answering for personal commitments. Ownership is about taking responsibility and taking initiative and doing the right thing whether or not the responsibility is clearly yours. At minimum, taking ownership means that if you recognize something is material to achieving results that you take the initiative to bring it to the attention of the right people. Ownership is something you chose to exhibit, it is not assigned to you. You are assigned responsibility but you have to assume ownership.
A person at work who says, "It's not my fault," does not accept the liability for any results. He is like the waiter who ignores your request for water by saying, "It's not my table." For example, instead of following up with other teammates to ensure the project is completed timely, a worker who lacks ownership forgets about the project the minute it leaves his desk. If the project's deadline is missed, he will let everyone know that he did his part whereas a person who demonstrates ownership makes it a point to follow up with team members so that the project does not fall apart.
Ownership and accountability are absolutely essential for the successful management of any organisation. As mentioned earlier, these are the two sides of the same coin. Consider the following statement, ‘Make your-self accountable, or the circumstances will make you accountable'. The first half of the statement refers to Ownership and the second half is about Accountability.
Ownership & Accountability
Ownership includes accountability but accountability does not necessarily include ownership. However, as the accountability increases, it also induces ownership.
While ownership is from heart, accountability is not. Ownership is what one has within; accountability is imposed by outside forces superior or otherwise.
If accountability is discipline, ownership is self-discipline; ‘what we do, when no one is watching’. The more we are accountable to ourselves, the less we shall be held accountable by others.
There can be a fear attached to accountability or in other words, one works because of fear factor and therefore is more unlikely to give his full potential. Ownership is from within, thus connected with virtues and without fear and individual is more likely to excel.
As managers and commanders we enjoy authority and statutory powers. There are legal provisions, rules, regulations, standard operating procedures, supervisors and other measures for checks and balances like performance matrices and appraisals with the help of which accountability is implemented in the organisations.
However, the managers and commanders have to step in their leadership roles to build ownership culture as it needs motivation, zeal, attitude, passion and individual and group commitment.
While efficient managers are needed to effectively implement accountability, transformational leadership or the inspirational leaders are required to build ownership culture. Leadership largely deals with people and management with things. Leader leads and manager manages. You cannot be one, without being the other. A leader creates many more leaders as he gets along. So, be a leader, not a boss. Boss also means a master, proprietor, dominator, sahib, employer, ruler, etc. Therefore boss could be neither manager nor leader.
Accountability and ownership are the two ends of a ladder. While accountability begins from the lower end, it graduates upwards through levels of unawareness or unconsciousness, blaming others, making excuses, waiting and hoping, acknowledging reality, owning the problem, finding and creating a solution and lastly fixing the problem. It converts into ownership at the upper end. Any organisation, team or individual without ownership and accountability can only ‘sink rock bottom’.
Measures to implement accountability effectively and ways to create ownership culture are accordingly different.
Effective Ways to Implement Accountability
The accountability system is used to ensure that all employees understand what their managers expect from them, what excellence looks like in action, how they are performing and when and how they need to adjust work practices. Accountability is something that commanders and managers build into their daily schedules. It takes years to create an accountable-workplace. It does not appear overnight. Accountability is implemented through a system of specific management processes or tasks.
Well Defined Roles Goals are at the heart of accountability. The board and top management creates goals for themselves and the general managers, while the general managers create goals for department managers. This process is replicated down the channel till mini goals are created for entry-level employees. These goals should be SMART; specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented and time-bound. Goals meeting these criteria will enable employees to measure their own productivity and improve performance. Deadlines are there in games, deadlines are there in life; 90 years and no more; it is thus natural that deadlines are there in business. Ensure that the right people are assigned the right work. Remove all ambiguity about who is doing what and how. Set weekly goals and deliverables so that employees are motivated to complete tasks on a regular basis.
o Clarified Expectations
Define and describe expectations so that all employees know what excellence looks like in terms of performance and behaviours and know what to shoot for. When we understand how we define exceptional performance (and I use the term "we" intentionally, because we define it together) they work to perform at their peak. People generally want to be successful. Many organizations that fail to adequately define excellence, later struggle to hold people accountable for the standards they desire.
Employees often struggle to balance tasks and goals when over burdened and eventually become overwhelmed and unable to complete their tasks on time. Before agreeing to accept a new task, think carefully about your schedule and whether you will be able to fulfil the task to the best of your ability. It is important to help the employees prioritize their responsibilities in relation to the organisation’s overall goals. Help people focus on what’s most important when priorities change throughout the year. Employees will thus feel more organized and competent to handle their tasks.
o Regular Feedback
Communicate well and regularly. It builds trust essential for highly accountable organisation. Hold meetings on weekly or bi-weekly basis to review performance of the past week or three days, difficulties encountered, discuss solutions and plan for next week.
Seek feedback to improve the process and progress. Organizations use multiple forms of feedback to assess the health and success of a manager, process or department. Organizations lacking multiple feedback mechanisms discover shortcomings when it is too late. Whenever critical feedback is received, it must be addressed. Objectives, expectations and timelines may have to be reset mutually, if required.
Timely, candid, and clear feedback helps in reinforcing great performance and management of inadequate performance. Address the poor performance as soon as possible. Do not let frustration to build to breaking point or it to become a big issue. Nothing is likely to change unless you confront the problem. Never be afraid to hold people accountable or avoid difficult conversation, when needed. Deal with the individuals one-on-one. Make it very clear that there is nothing personal about it. Focus on the performance, not the person. Keep your voice and communication very balanced. Dialogue should be healthy and solution provider. Throughout your conversation, concentrate on maintaining the employee’s self-esteem by showing concern for the individual as well as the needs of the company. Question their answers. Get to specific; avoid words like around, approximately, maybe. Do not let them get away with vagueness, go deep, do effective questioning. Miscommunication from leaders and misunderstanding from employees leads to lack of accountability.
When something has not gone to plan, ask for onetime special feedback and look for ways to do things differently in future. One specific way is to receive inputs from 360 degrees that is multiple sources; supervisors, colleagues, subordinates, customers, vendors and other stakeholders. Develop a plan using this feedback to help a particular employee, team or department grow their strengths and improve on weaknesses.
o Measurement Work and processes should be measured against the highest priority goals. A variety of advanced metrics if used will help people know their score.
o Evaluation Monitoring your employees’ progress will help motivate them to be more productive and accountable. Along with monitoring progress, it is equally important to regularly share progress reports with them so they know the areas that need attention and areas they are excelling. Evaluation during Annual appraisal only, turns into a one sided affair, as on that day, both the carrot and stick are with the boss. However, always being on top of employees is also a recipe for disaster and is likely to cause distrust in the workplace. Micromanaging is not accountability and no one wants to be micromanaged. Employees should create ‘to-do lists’ for the things they are directly responsible. Thereafter, track their work without being overbearing.
o Recognition A little recognition goes a long way towards making people feel that their work matters. Reward those who are responsible for positive forward motion. It also catalyzes and inspires others to emulate in hope of being recognized in future. Organisations that recognise employee talent have shown both better results and low employee turnover.
o Consequences that Come from our Actions Leaders are likely to lose the kudos when poor performance is not addressed and poor performers continue without repercussions. Truly slack employee may have to be issued written goals and instructions to avoid the excuse like ‘I did not understand’ or ‘I did not know’. Although excessive or misjudged negative assessment can result in loss of innovation and risk taking. Remember poor performance may also be due to lack of clear instructions, conflicting priorities, inadequate training, technical issues, system errors or personal issues seeping into work.
o Hire Accountable Values During recruitment interviews, assess the suitability of the candidates to adapt to ownership culture by asking relevant questions.
Personal Accountability
The best way to create a stand-up organization is to lead by example. Personal accountability is an attitude and attribute. Make sure employees understand what you expect of them and you hold yourself to the same high standard. You need to make sure you are following your own rules. Execution suffers without personal accountability. This happens in two ways. The first is that when we do not hold ourselves accountable to getting work done well and on time, there is a tendency to become even more lenient and forgiving for slippages. A day becomes a week, a week a month. If it happens once, it is that little bit more acceptable for it to happen again. The second is that when we do not hold ourselves accountable, it can snowball in a team, department and organization. Tolerating missed deadlines, lack of punctuality and un-finished work has the tendency to make this behaviour ‘no big deal’. People learn that the real deadline is a week from the published one; that consistently being 10 minutes late for a meeting is the norm; that sub-par work is acceptable in the interest of ‘getting it done’.
Follow through on your promises, own up to your mistakes and give feedback even when it is not easy. Follow following guidelines for success:
o Commit to vision and objectives
o Know who, what, when and how of the plan
o Accept responsibilities and own results
o Communicate effectively
o Speak openly and sincerely
o Lead people to lead themselves
o Be a source of inspiration
o Be honest
o Develop and foster relations
o Seek help when essential
o Sacrifice, if required for good of team
Joint Accountability
In large organizations, individuals contribute in different ways towards organisation's success. It is often difficult to identify who should be accountable for the results. Therefore, they are jointly accountable for the results. Similarly, all members of a small team must take ownership of their role and responsibilities for achieving the peak performance of the team. They identify gaps and plug these to build an effective team and are jointly accountable for the performance of the team. In an environment of joint accountability, individual performances become immaterial unless targeted results are achieved. One member’s delay becomes team’s delay. When 10 people are waiting, if one member is two minutes late; it is not just two minutes lost, the team has lost 22 minutes. Therefore, teams should be assessed jointly for going beyond or falling short of the goals set out for them.
Ownership Environment
Ownership is not something that can be demanded or required of anyone. People willingly own or not own tasks or the job depending on how they feel about their work. People choose to take ownership depending on intrinsic side of things. Organisation culture is very important as finger pointing, lack of trust and blame game leads to low accountability. In such culture even the most driven and motivated person will fail. Plants cannot blossom without water, sunshine and space to grow. Atmosphere is culture. When we take care of the Human Resources, the organization culture develops in to a positive entity and every other aspects of business fall in line automatically. Human Resource Development is a process by which the employees of an organization are helped in a continuous planned way to:
o Acquire or sharpen capabilities required to perform various functions associated with their present or future expected roles
o Develop their general capabilities as individuals and discover their own inner potentials for their own and organizational development purposes
o Develop an organizational culture in which supervisor- subordinate relationships, team work and collaboration among sub-units are strong and contribute to the professional well- being, motivation and pride of employees
Leaders and managers can thus create a workplace that is intrinsically motivating and develop a culture of ownership. We cannot expect employees to act like owners unless they are positioned as one. Elements of the ideal ownership environment include:
o Challenging Work and Interesting Problems to Solve Never underestimate the capabilities of your team members. Remember, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’. There should be an element of stretch in the tasks assigned to them. Stretch is to tickle their creativity but not to fatigue them.
o Connection with the Work, Team and the Organization Create a sense of mission, real value culture, shared vision. Involvement leads to ownership. You need to figure out how to tap into the emotional needs of your people to help them understand their roles. Reputation of the organization matters.
o A Feeling of Being Cared for
Always remember you are dealing with human beings. They have emotions, pride, personal goals, aspirations and problems. Treat them like your family members and children. Small but sincere gestures of care and concern go a long way towards showing your team members how important they are to you and influence their happiness, productivity and contribution. Keep the lines of communication open. Do the best things you can for your people including providing constructive criticism and discipline.
Some people avoid accountability as a self-defence mechanism, because they are worried about what might happen if things go wrong. Build their confidence so that they are not afraid to take things on. Secondly, help them understand the difference between accountability and making a judgement about how well they are doing their job. Failure to meet an objective is OK if the individual lets the team know with as much notice as possible, why it happened, how they intend to correct it and to ask for help if it is needed.
o Create Relationships
Anything that erodes relationships erodes performance. Focus on the relationships first and the results afterward. Managers have most substantial impact on the employee’s perception of company culture. A large number of the employees leave their job due to actions of their managers and supervisors. Language is very powerful; avoid blaming others. Instead of saying ‘They made mistakes’, saying ‘we made mistake’ is better and saying ‘I made mistake’ is best. However saying, ‘It is my mistake, I did not fire you earlier’ is sarcastic and worst. Organise social get-togethers, meaningful family welfare schemes related to housing, children’s education, insurance coverage and financial security.
Most of the problems and variations in results arise from systems and not workers, but we devote more time on correcting workers than systems. Numerical goals are meaningless if the systems are flawed. Extrinsic motivation is not effective. Therefore, improve processes to produce defect less items. Involve entire production force to improve process.
o Collaboration and Partnership When people work together to seize an opportunity or solve a problem, they tend to engage and take pride in their work. It is a good idea to have co-terminus individual and organisational goals. Appreciate a corporate house whose aim is to create thousand millionaires.
o Opportunities to Grow Everyone wants to grow in their personal and professional lives. Afford them opportunities for training and development to acquire new skills, higher education qualification and facilitate and support their career growth through sound potential appraisal and career planning. Attractive pay package, financial incentives, performance reward, paid holidays, long term benefits like retirement plans, gratuity and long term leave facilitate individual growth.
o Autonomy to Make Choices that Affect Their Work Most problems have multiple right answers, so give people the freedom and control to make decisions. Tell them what to do and not how to do. Their solutions will probably be pretty good. Support them and improve upon those solutions instead of inserting your own. This will increase their skills, confidence and ownership.
o A feeling that Their Work has Meaning and is Important to the Organization People want to be part of the larger frame. Help them see the bigger picture and understand the impact of their work on the organisation. Every manager has to know the plan of one level above his position and one level directly below controlled by him. It is however, a good idea for every employee to know the plans two levels up and two levels down to get the larger picture right, for effectively participating in all the activities of the organisation. This may differ from organisation to organisation depending on their structures. Lastly make employees understand the importance of their work and contribution towards overall success.
o Work and Workplaces that are Fun and Light Hearted A work place where everyone is smiling is far superior to five star facilities with tense atmosphere. Remember, you are never fully clothed till you wear a smile. Positive organization culture, good work environment, suitable nature of work, job rotation and supporting colleagues make workplaces fun and light hearted. Open environment can be challenging to work, as co-workers may be chattering over head. Cater for work life balance as employees have to take care of aging parents, children and challenging situations. Flexibility of place and time can take care of traffic problems of reaching a set place at set time. Team volunteer effort is very productive as during time away from focused work their conversation can be very productive.
Conclusion
Organisations should create work environment where accountability should be as easy as breathing. Accountability of the leaders should be of highest level. They however, need to be supported to maintain that standard. It takes years and considerable amount of effort and resources to build ownership culture in organisations. Consistent sharing of information, performance feedback, decision making discretion and a work place that minimises inactivity are four practices that lead to sustained performance. Relaxed and flexible environment increases commitment. It leads to creativity and innovation. Always take care of individual’s need for inclusion in team, control over work environment, pride in the work and esteem. Managers and leaders are the face of the organisation culture. They should be selected, recruited and groomed carefully, preferably from the base level entry itself.
Never ignore the social aspects of accountability. Majority of problems at work place relate to challenges at home. Social pressures like marriage trouble, health crisis of self or family, threat of going homeless due to higher rents and such like issues play on the ability of the employee to get the job done and relationships at the work place. Adverse comments in such situations can tear away all commitments to accountability. Managers and colleagues should be supportive to such individuals so long as the situation does not become unhealthy.
Almost everyone has accountability issues in life. We do not like to be held accountable by our boss, colleagues, subordinate staff, coach or even parents, children, siblings, friends and least of all by spouse. Even though accountability extends beyond genders, generations, age groups and all spheres of professional, personal and public life, we hate the idea of being held accountable, for the possibility of a letdown because we may not done something as effectively as we should have or expected from us.
While we want increased accountability from others, we flinch at the idea of showing it ourselves. Some of the managers and commanders, for this very reason, avoid holding even their younger colleagues accountable because they evade friction and difficult conversation. Therefore, even though every organisation wants all its members to demonstrate accountability, only a few are able to sustain the culture of accountability. The consequences of ignoring responsibilities can be disastrous.
Most people view accountability as corrective, punitive and disciplinary action. It is used synonymously with responsibility, blame worthiness and liability. Sometimes accepting accountability also means admitting you made a mistake and punishment may be the result. Government has accountability for decisions and laws affecting citizens, an individual has accountability for his behaviour and actions. After all when things are sailing smoothly people rarely ask who is accountable for this. When the commander or senior manager says, “I want the highest standards of accountability”, we perceive it as, ‘you will be held by neck and heads will roll’.
There is thus a negative connotation attached to accountability. On the other hand, ‘Ownership’ sounds so positive. These are however two sides of the same coin. Ownership and Accountability is a very interesting subject. We shall first understand the meaning of accountability, its necessity and advantages, thereafter dwell on Ownership, compare the two and lastly highlight measures to create accountable organisations and build ownership environment.
Accountability
Webster's defines ‘accountable’ as ‘Subject to having to report, explain or justify; being answerable, responsible’. This confession-oriented and powerless definition suggests what we have already observed - accountability is viewed as something that belittles or arises as a consequence of poor performance, problems or failure to achieve targets.
There are far too many ways in which accountability has been explained world over. A simple, relevant and comprehensive definition of accountability is as follows:
Accountability simply means ‘Being responsible for decisions made, actions taken, and assignments completed or something you are supposed to do. Every employee or manager is accountable for the job assigned to him. He is supposed to complete the job as per the expectations and inform his superiors accordingly. It involves either the expectation or assumption of account-giving behaviour. Accountability is the liability created for the use of authority. It is the answerability for the performance of the assigned duties.’
If accountability is merely an account of how we have discharged our responsibilities, then both, positive and negative feedbacks are essential. The problem is with our eyes. These are intrinsically trained for fault finding and our mind focuses only there. Instead of saying, “The wall is nicely painted, just that small patch if it is redone or retouched it will look better”, we end up saying, “who left that big patch, poor show”. This results in de-motivation and sulking and the employee may end up leaving the jobs due to lack of appreciation.
Accountability is a management control process used in organisations, wherein positive or negative feedback as applicable is given for a person's actions. Depending on such a response, the person might feel reassured or need to correct his or her error.
Necessity
Accountability is essential for the healthy and successful functioning of an organisation. If there is no accountability, some individuals can get away with poor performance or behaviour. Others may begin to believe that poor conduct is permissible and begin to resent the low-performing employee and his manager because they have to shoulder more work to make up for their teammate’s deficiencies. If the ‘problem employee’ is not addressed, the team will perceive it as favouritism or weakness, which can be de-motivating for everyone. Overall performance may thus start declining as one thing will lead to the other. Lack of accountability is bad even for the employees who are not performing well. A salesperson who knows that he is the only one who has not met his sales goal may feel ignored, discouraged and devalued and quit due to lack of push to improve or encouragement and guidance to improve.
Other factors necessitating adopting accountability culture are:
o It is crucial for ensuring high performance within an organization.
o It addresses both the organization's expectation of the employee and the employee's expectation of the organization.
o Accountable employees help maintain a positive culture, vision, and ethics.
o A sense of accountability to the team creates an incentive for individuals to help each other.
o Accountability helps identify who is responsible for ensuring that outcomes meet goals and creates incentives for success.
o Accountability builds transparency; one of the main pillars of good governance.
Benefits of Accountability
Even though it is tough to create accountability environment and accept personal accountability, it has many advantages.
Builds Trust Accountability enforces or increases commitment, willingness to admit and dependability. This enhances mutual trust between managers, employees and peer groups as they are more likely to keep their word.
Promotes Ownership When people realise that organisation values their work and they impact the team meaningfully, their own sense of belonging enhances.
Inspires Confidence Right kind of support, constructive feedback, consideration of members’ suggestions, balanced autonomy at work and challenge to find solutions enhances their skills and confidence.
Improves Performance Accountability eliminates the time and effort wasted on unproductive and distracting activities. Secondly, losses due to mistakes and errors get avoided by putting the right people on the right jobs.
Business Benefits Accountable employees deliver numerous business benefits: like better execution, lower employee turnover, creativity and innovation, revitalize the business character, strengthen competitiveness and improve the quality of products, services and responsiveness of organizations to the needs of environment.
Personal Benefits Firstly individuals are likely to have healthier relationships with friends, family, and colleagues. Children, who were encouraged to take personal responsibility for their actions have more positive social interactions. Accountability can also save time and money. People who take responsibility for their actions speak up and look for solutions whenever they see a problem. This prevents the situation getting worse and stops costs and delays from escalating. It can boost chances of promotion. When one shows, senior colleagues that he is dependable, they mark him as someone with leadership potential.
Some of the directly visible benefits of accountability are:
o Everyone reports on time for work and stays until the end of the work day or shift
o Performs all assigned tasks
o An increase in employees feeling empowered and competent
o Surge in creativity and innovation
o Making good ethical choices
o Making morally and legally upright decisions for performing their job
o Making choices with team members in mind
o Supporting the mission of the company
o Supporting co-workers, supervisors and clients
Ownership
There is a new definition of accountability. It actually covers all the facets of ownership beautifully.
‘A personal choice to rise above one's circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary for achieving desired results—to See It, Own It, Solve It, and Do It.’ This definition includes a mindset or attitude of continually asking, "What else can I do to rise above my circumstances and achieve the results I desire?" It requires ownership for making, keeping and answering for personal commitments. Ownership is about taking responsibility and taking initiative and doing the right thing whether or not the responsibility is clearly yours. At minimum, taking ownership means that if you recognize something is material to achieving results that you take the initiative to bring it to the attention of the right people. Ownership is something you chose to exhibit, it is not assigned to you. You are assigned responsibility but you have to assume ownership.
A person at work who says, "It's not my fault," does not accept the liability for any results. He is like the waiter who ignores your request for water by saying, "It's not my table." For example, instead of following up with other teammates to ensure the project is completed timely, a worker who lacks ownership forgets about the project the minute it leaves his desk. If the project's deadline is missed, he will let everyone know that he did his part whereas a person who demonstrates ownership makes it a point to follow up with team members so that the project does not fall apart.
Ownership and accountability are absolutely essential for the successful management of any organisation. As mentioned earlier, these are the two sides of the same coin. Consider the following statement, ‘Make your-self accountable, or the circumstances will make you accountable'. The first half of the statement refers to Ownership and the second half is about Accountability.
Ownership & Accountability
Ownership includes accountability but accountability does not necessarily include ownership. However, as the accountability increases, it also induces ownership.
While ownership is from heart, accountability is not. Ownership is what one has within; accountability is imposed by outside forces superior or otherwise.
If accountability is discipline, ownership is self-discipline; ‘what we do, when no one is watching’. The more we are accountable to ourselves, the less we shall be held accountable by others.
There can be a fear attached to accountability or in other words, one works because of fear factor and therefore is more unlikely to give his full potential. Ownership is from within, thus connected with virtues and without fear and individual is more likely to excel.
As managers and commanders we enjoy authority and statutory powers. There are legal provisions, rules, regulations, standard operating procedures, supervisors and other measures for checks and balances like performance matrices and appraisals with the help of which accountability is implemented in the organisations.
However, the managers and commanders have to step in their leadership roles to build ownership culture as it needs motivation, zeal, attitude, passion and individual and group commitment.
While efficient managers are needed to effectively implement accountability, transformational leadership or the inspirational leaders are required to build ownership culture. Leadership largely deals with people and management with things. Leader leads and manager manages. You cannot be one, without being the other. A leader creates many more leaders as he gets along. So, be a leader, not a boss. Boss also means a master, proprietor, dominator, sahib, employer, ruler, etc. Therefore boss could be neither manager nor leader.
Accountability and ownership are the two ends of a ladder. While accountability begins from the lower end, it graduates upwards through levels of unawareness or unconsciousness, blaming others, making excuses, waiting and hoping, acknowledging reality, owning the problem, finding and creating a solution and lastly fixing the problem. It converts into ownership at the upper end. Any organisation, team or individual without ownership and accountability can only ‘sink rock bottom’.
Measures to implement accountability effectively and ways to create ownership culture are accordingly different.
Effective Ways to Implement Accountability
The accountability system is used to ensure that all employees understand what their managers expect from them, what excellence looks like in action, how they are performing and when and how they need to adjust work practices. Accountability is something that commanders and managers build into their daily schedules. It takes years to create an accountable-workplace. It does not appear overnight. Accountability is implemented through a system of specific management processes or tasks.
Well Defined Roles Goals are at the heart of accountability. The board and top management creates goals for themselves and the general managers, while the general managers create goals for department managers. This process is replicated down the channel till mini goals are created for entry-level employees. These goals should be SMART; specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented and time-bound. Goals meeting these criteria will enable employees to measure their own productivity and improve performance. Deadlines are there in games, deadlines are there in life; 90 years and no more; it is thus natural that deadlines are there in business. Ensure that the right people are assigned the right work. Remove all ambiguity about who is doing what and how. Set weekly goals and deliverables so that employees are motivated to complete tasks on a regular basis.
o Clarified Expectations
Define and describe expectations so that all employees know what excellence looks like in terms of performance and behaviours and know what to shoot for. When we understand how we define exceptional performance (and I use the term "we" intentionally, because we define it together) they work to perform at their peak. People generally want to be successful. Many organizations that fail to adequately define excellence, later struggle to hold people accountable for the standards they desire.
Employees often struggle to balance tasks and goals when over burdened and eventually become overwhelmed and unable to complete their tasks on time. Before agreeing to accept a new task, think carefully about your schedule and whether you will be able to fulfil the task to the best of your ability. It is important to help the employees prioritize their responsibilities in relation to the organisation’s overall goals. Help people focus on what’s most important when priorities change throughout the year. Employees will thus feel more organized and competent to handle their tasks.
o Regular Feedback
Communicate well and regularly. It builds trust essential for highly accountable organisation. Hold meetings on weekly or bi-weekly basis to review performance of the past week or three days, difficulties encountered, discuss solutions and plan for next week.
Seek feedback to improve the process and progress. Organizations use multiple forms of feedback to assess the health and success of a manager, process or department. Organizations lacking multiple feedback mechanisms discover shortcomings when it is too late. Whenever critical feedback is received, it must be addressed. Objectives, expectations and timelines may have to be reset mutually, if required.
Timely, candid, and clear feedback helps in reinforcing great performance and management of inadequate performance. Address the poor performance as soon as possible. Do not let frustration to build to breaking point or it to become a big issue. Nothing is likely to change unless you confront the problem. Never be afraid to hold people accountable or avoid difficult conversation, when needed. Deal with the individuals one-on-one. Make it very clear that there is nothing personal about it. Focus on the performance, not the person. Keep your voice and communication very balanced. Dialogue should be healthy and solution provider. Throughout your conversation, concentrate on maintaining the employee’s self-esteem by showing concern for the individual as well as the needs of the company. Question their answers. Get to specific; avoid words like around, approximately, maybe. Do not let them get away with vagueness, go deep, do effective questioning. Miscommunication from leaders and misunderstanding from employees leads to lack of accountability.
When something has not gone to plan, ask for onetime special feedback and look for ways to do things differently in future. One specific way is to receive inputs from 360 degrees that is multiple sources; supervisors, colleagues, subordinates, customers, vendors and other stakeholders. Develop a plan using this feedback to help a particular employee, team or department grow their strengths and improve on weaknesses.
o Measurement Work and processes should be measured against the highest priority goals. A variety of advanced metrics if used will help people know their score.
o Evaluation Monitoring your employees’ progress will help motivate them to be more productive and accountable. Along with monitoring progress, it is equally important to regularly share progress reports with them so they know the areas that need attention and areas they are excelling. Evaluation during Annual appraisal only, turns into a one sided affair, as on that day, both the carrot and stick are with the boss. However, always being on top of employees is also a recipe for disaster and is likely to cause distrust in the workplace. Micromanaging is not accountability and no one wants to be micromanaged. Employees should create ‘to-do lists’ for the things they are directly responsible. Thereafter, track their work without being overbearing.
o Recognition A little recognition goes a long way towards making people feel that their work matters. Reward those who are responsible for positive forward motion. It also catalyzes and inspires others to emulate in hope of being recognized in future. Organisations that recognise employee talent have shown both better results and low employee turnover.
o Consequences that Come from our Actions Leaders are likely to lose the kudos when poor performance is not addressed and poor performers continue without repercussions. Truly slack employee may have to be issued written goals and instructions to avoid the excuse like ‘I did not understand’ or ‘I did not know’. Although excessive or misjudged negative assessment can result in loss of innovation and risk taking. Remember poor performance may also be due to lack of clear instructions, conflicting priorities, inadequate training, technical issues, system errors or personal issues seeping into work.
o Hire Accountable Values During recruitment interviews, assess the suitability of the candidates to adapt to ownership culture by asking relevant questions.
Personal Accountability
The best way to create a stand-up organization is to lead by example. Personal accountability is an attitude and attribute. Make sure employees understand what you expect of them and you hold yourself to the same high standard. You need to make sure you are following your own rules. Execution suffers without personal accountability. This happens in two ways. The first is that when we do not hold ourselves accountable to getting work done well and on time, there is a tendency to become even more lenient and forgiving for slippages. A day becomes a week, a week a month. If it happens once, it is that little bit more acceptable for it to happen again. The second is that when we do not hold ourselves accountable, it can snowball in a team, department and organization. Tolerating missed deadlines, lack of punctuality and un-finished work has the tendency to make this behaviour ‘no big deal’. People learn that the real deadline is a week from the published one; that consistently being 10 minutes late for a meeting is the norm; that sub-par work is acceptable in the interest of ‘getting it done’.
Follow through on your promises, own up to your mistakes and give feedback even when it is not easy. Follow following guidelines for success:
o Commit to vision and objectives
o Know who, what, when and how of the plan
o Accept responsibilities and own results
o Communicate effectively
o Speak openly and sincerely
o Lead people to lead themselves
o Be a source of inspiration
o Be honest
o Develop and foster relations
o Seek help when essential
o Sacrifice, if required for good of team
Joint Accountability
In large organizations, individuals contribute in different ways towards organisation's success. It is often difficult to identify who should be accountable for the results. Therefore, they are jointly accountable for the results. Similarly, all members of a small team must take ownership of their role and responsibilities for achieving the peak performance of the team. They identify gaps and plug these to build an effective team and are jointly accountable for the performance of the team. In an environment of joint accountability, individual performances become immaterial unless targeted results are achieved. One member’s delay becomes team’s delay. When 10 people are waiting, if one member is two minutes late; it is not just two minutes lost, the team has lost 22 minutes. Therefore, teams should be assessed jointly for going beyond or falling short of the goals set out for them.
Ownership Environment
Ownership is not something that can be demanded or required of anyone. People willingly own or not own tasks or the job depending on how they feel about their work. People choose to take ownership depending on intrinsic side of things. Organisation culture is very important as finger pointing, lack of trust and blame game leads to low accountability. In such culture even the most driven and motivated person will fail. Plants cannot blossom without water, sunshine and space to grow. Atmosphere is culture. When we take care of the Human Resources, the organization culture develops in to a positive entity and every other aspects of business fall in line automatically. Human Resource Development is a process by which the employees of an organization are helped in a continuous planned way to:
o Acquire or sharpen capabilities required to perform various functions associated with their present or future expected roles
o Develop their general capabilities as individuals and discover their own inner potentials for their own and organizational development purposes
o Develop an organizational culture in which supervisor- subordinate relationships, team work and collaboration among sub-units are strong and contribute to the professional well- being, motivation and pride of employees
Leaders and managers can thus create a workplace that is intrinsically motivating and develop a culture of ownership. We cannot expect employees to act like owners unless they are positioned as one. Elements of the ideal ownership environment include:
o Challenging Work and Interesting Problems to Solve Never underestimate the capabilities of your team members. Remember, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’. There should be an element of stretch in the tasks assigned to them. Stretch is to tickle their creativity but not to fatigue them.
o Connection with the Work, Team and the Organization Create a sense of mission, real value culture, shared vision. Involvement leads to ownership. You need to figure out how to tap into the emotional needs of your people to help them understand their roles. Reputation of the organization matters.
o A Feeling of Being Cared for
Always remember you are dealing with human beings. They have emotions, pride, personal goals, aspirations and problems. Treat them like your family members and children. Small but sincere gestures of care and concern go a long way towards showing your team members how important they are to you and influence their happiness, productivity and contribution. Keep the lines of communication open. Do the best things you can for your people including providing constructive criticism and discipline.
Some people avoid accountability as a self-defence mechanism, because they are worried about what might happen if things go wrong. Build their confidence so that they are not afraid to take things on. Secondly, help them understand the difference between accountability and making a judgement about how well they are doing their job. Failure to meet an objective is OK if the individual lets the team know with as much notice as possible, why it happened, how they intend to correct it and to ask for help if it is needed.
o Create Relationships
Anything that erodes relationships erodes performance. Focus on the relationships first and the results afterward. Managers have most substantial impact on the employee’s perception of company culture. A large number of the employees leave their job due to actions of their managers and supervisors. Language is very powerful; avoid blaming others. Instead of saying ‘They made mistakes’, saying ‘we made mistake’ is better and saying ‘I made mistake’ is best. However saying, ‘It is my mistake, I did not fire you earlier’ is sarcastic and worst. Organise social get-togethers, meaningful family welfare schemes related to housing, children’s education, insurance coverage and financial security.
Most of the problems and variations in results arise from systems and not workers, but we devote more time on correcting workers than systems. Numerical goals are meaningless if the systems are flawed. Extrinsic motivation is not effective. Therefore, improve processes to produce defect less items. Involve entire production force to improve process.
o Collaboration and Partnership When people work together to seize an opportunity or solve a problem, they tend to engage and take pride in their work. It is a good idea to have co-terminus individual and organisational goals. Appreciate a corporate house whose aim is to create thousand millionaires.
o Opportunities to Grow Everyone wants to grow in their personal and professional lives. Afford them opportunities for training and development to acquire new skills, higher education qualification and facilitate and support their career growth through sound potential appraisal and career planning. Attractive pay package, financial incentives, performance reward, paid holidays, long term benefits like retirement plans, gratuity and long term leave facilitate individual growth.
o Autonomy to Make Choices that Affect Their Work Most problems have multiple right answers, so give people the freedom and control to make decisions. Tell them what to do and not how to do. Their solutions will probably be pretty good. Support them and improve upon those solutions instead of inserting your own. This will increase their skills, confidence and ownership.
o A feeling that Their Work has Meaning and is Important to the Organization People want to be part of the larger frame. Help them see the bigger picture and understand the impact of their work on the organisation. Every manager has to know the plan of one level above his position and one level directly below controlled by him. It is however, a good idea for every employee to know the plans two levels up and two levels down to get the larger picture right, for effectively participating in all the activities of the organisation. This may differ from organisation to organisation depending on their structures. Lastly make employees understand the importance of their work and contribution towards overall success.
o Work and Workplaces that are Fun and Light Hearted A work place where everyone is smiling is far superior to five star facilities with tense atmosphere. Remember, you are never fully clothed till you wear a smile. Positive organization culture, good work environment, suitable nature of work, job rotation and supporting colleagues make workplaces fun and light hearted. Open environment can be challenging to work, as co-workers may be chattering over head. Cater for work life balance as employees have to take care of aging parents, children and challenging situations. Flexibility of place and time can take care of traffic problems of reaching a set place at set time. Team volunteer effort is very productive as during time away from focused work their conversation can be very productive.
Conclusion
Organisations should create work environment where accountability should be as easy as breathing. Accountability of the leaders should be of highest level. They however, need to be supported to maintain that standard. It takes years and considerable amount of effort and resources to build ownership culture in organisations. Consistent sharing of information, performance feedback, decision making discretion and a work place that minimises inactivity are four practices that lead to sustained performance. Relaxed and flexible environment increases commitment. It leads to creativity and innovation. Always take care of individual’s need for inclusion in team, control over work environment, pride in the work and esteem. Managers and leaders are the face of the organisation culture. They should be selected, recruited and groomed carefully, preferably from the base level entry itself.
Never ignore the social aspects of accountability. Majority of problems at work place relate to challenges at home. Social pressures like marriage trouble, health crisis of self or family, threat of going homeless due to higher rents and such like issues play on the ability of the employee to get the job done and relationships at the work place. Adverse comments in such situations can tear away all commitments to accountability. Managers and colleagues should be supportive to such individuals so long as the situation does not become unhealthy.
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