Who's Accountable?

Pulp & Paper, Apr 2005 by Gates, George

"Responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star."

- Ambrose Bierce

OUR SON WAS KILLED LAST YEAR BY A HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER. A legal loophole made it possible for the perpetrators to escape accountability. Since then, I've thought long and hard obsessed, maybe - about accountability.

I recently began working with a new client organization. As usual, I started by listening for several days to groups of employees, supervisors, and managers. In the past, I prepared detailed questions for this sort of assessment. After 25 years, I've learned that one question does fine for starters: What's it like to work around here? To my continual amazement, people tell me. Boy, do they tell me.

These people were no exception; I got an earful: lousy communication, loony decisions, blatant favoritism, arbitrary work changes, know-nothing bosses, and slacking employees - the usual. What struck me this time, with my "accountability" nerve endings exposed, was the frequent response to my follow-up question: Who do you think's accountable for any of this? The answer repeated most often was short: "Them." The general consensus seemed to be, "Us is OK. Them ain't."

Thus, the Bluebird of Accountability gently unfolded its wings, fluttered into the air searching for a place to land - and thudded into a brick wall, dropping dazed to the floor. It was enough to confirm Gates' 3rd Law: Responsible people, when assembled into an organization, will tend toward reciprocal blame.

Why avoid the consequences?

What prompts some people to shuck and jive to avoid the consequences of their decisions and actions? Why do they blame others for the mess they're in and expect someone else to clean it up? What makes them duck and weave instead of standing tall when the heat is on?

Fear, perhaps, or the cowardice it begets. If we're accountable, we're answerable. We might have to give account of our actions, of how we discharged our duties, of how we handled a trust we've assumed. We're obliged to answer to an authority that may impose a penalty for failure. That's the Pucker Factor: we could get nailed. Far better, we conclude, to play Whack-a-Mole, raising our heads only long enough to avoid being hit by the mallet.

Or, maybe it's embarrassment. Responsible work and behavior is characterized by good judgment, sound thinking. A responsible person can be depended upon, trusted. When our behaviors or decisions show that we can't - that we're unreliable - this implies that we can't act without guidance or superior authority. Maybe we're ashamed to admit that some "mom" or "dad" has to watch us and tell us what to do, that we're incapable of holding a responsible position at work. So, better to shift the accountability to someone else when we screw up. Make somebody else look bad instead of me, and I feel better.

A personal choice

Alexander Pope wrote, "A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday." In most organizations I've seen, it would be a long leap to that conclusion. If you want to know whether your workplace culture encourages accountability, ask what happened to the last person who made a really big mistake. If he or she was hung from the yardarm, you can guess that blame has driven accountability below decks.

There's a mistaken notion afloat that leaders can "make" people accountable. But accountability is each person's choice. No amount of the boss's huffing and puffing will defeat someone determined to shuck and jive, duck and weave.

Leaders can only make people responsible, not accountable.

We've all heard "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." Yes, but you can salt its oats. Leaders can be clear that they expect honest accountability, and then ask for it often. They can reward with encouragement - rather than bury with blame - those who give a true account of themselves. Above all, they can demonstrate, with their own willingness to be held to account, the very accountability they seek from others. (No easy task in a world where even the boss expects the boss to be always right.)

It takes strength to choose consistently to be answerable for one's own behavior. Things can be responsible: luck, a star, a tsunami, a car. Only people can elect to be accountable, adults with the moral courage to step forward and say, for good or ill, "I did this."

GEORGE GATES is President of Core-R.O.I. Inc.