Putting Accountability into practice

We could summarise the concept of Accountability as the awareness and commitment to do things better every day, to seek excellence and whatever is necessary to contribute to the results of the organisation or team to which one belongs.

Given that it is a competence that requires a high level of self-knowledge and self-motivation, in this post we indicate some self-development activities that, if well worked on, will help us to develop our level of Accountability on a personal level.

Activity 1: Read and find out what is being done outside your circle of familiarity.
Regularly reading reports or documents can help us to broaden our vision of the company, the business or the strategy of other companies.

Activity 2: Re-learning to work in teams

Working with the team is essential to develop a level of agreement on where the organisation is going and why. In this regard we must:

• Analysing the different activities, making an effort to find out what to do to improve results, defining roles precisely and making it clear that in any job there can be “grey areas” and that the aim is that no one should justify themselves by claiming that it was not their responsibility.
• Knowing how to delegate activities so that everyone can do their job properly.

Some recommended exercises:

• Make a list of all the activities to be carried out, identifying which ones can be delegated.
• Identify which person can carry out which task or who can be trained to take it on. Plan a delegation and training plan for that person.
• Make a personal follow-up plan with that person. Trust, but verify.
• Take advantage of available opportunities (presentations, meetings…) to make people in the team aware of each other’s roles and objectives.
• Get your team used to a result-oriented exercise.
• Define “world class” objectives, with high quality standards and indicators to be achieved.
• Carry out a planning and monitoring exercise: what / when / how.
• Establish a systematic activity monitoring system. Demand results from your collaborators, do not tolerate continuous excuses; and start by setting an example yourself.
• Get used to a strict use of the agenda: keeping to what has been agreed is the best way to foster Accountability in oneself, and sets an example for others.
• Periodically check that all employees are clear about the strategic objectives of their unit, and how they affect their operational objectives and daily activities.
• Ask for feedback after each individual or collective communication action.

If you have failed, own your mistakes. Remember complaint handling techniques: How are you going to compensate your customer for a service failure?

It is essential to communicate the company’s achievements, new activities, best practices, people recognised, making it clear that we are all responsible for that success, and we can all be recognised in that way at some point.

In summary, the steps to achieve Accountability in the face of “the blame game” are.

• Look at it: get to know it, get interested.
• Own it: make it yours, identify yourself.
• Solve it: reason it out, look for solutions.
• Do it: execute your actions.