The Big A3 min read

Accountability is crucial for team engagement and individual growth in an organisation when it is implemented with clear standards, mutual accountability, and open feedback for long-term benefits in trust and innovation.

One of the indicators we look at when taking a group through our Team Engagement journey is accountability. I’m always interested to see how people react when they realise the Big A is part of our model because it quite frequently produces a flash of anxiety or concern. But at the same time, most of us have a strong desire to see others showing a willingness to accept responsibility for their actions.

Most businesses embed accountability into the processes, systems, and, ideally, the human aspect of their operations. However, there’s a common tendency to overly rely on procedures and systems, focusing on numbers and statistics instead of actually engaging with the humans behind those numbers.

While procedures and systems are essential, they shouldn’t come at the cost of the — often messy — interpersonal side of accountability.

Just as form follows function, so the design of accountability measures should primarily prioritize the performance and growth of individuals within the organization.

So, how do we prioritise the growth and development of people through accountability?

1. First, ensure the standards that guide how work is completed are clear.

To prioritise the growth and development of people in how accountability is practised, companies need to promote values-based decision-making.

Values here refer to the standards by which employees set priorities and are enabled to make situational judgments in their day-to-day work. Unlike rule-based decision-making, value-based decision-making invites employees to make choices based on their understanding and internalisation of the company’s values.

A simple example of this might be in a retail store with compassion and responsibility as core values, and SOPs require the tellers to remain at their tills while on duty. If teller A sees an elderly client struggling with a large item near their till, moving to help them (after ensuring her neighbouring teller keeps an eye on their till) might be in contravention of the SOP, but is directly aligned with the company values.

These values should guide each employee to make decisions in challenging situations and decide what they can and can’t do to promote the strategic direction (vision, mission, business objectives) of the company. An important question the executive team needs to ask is “Are employees clear on the values, the definition of these values and the behaviours that guide these values?”

2. Secondly, practise mutual accountability around work standards.

We’ve identified two practices that help establish mutual accountability.

Firstly, employees need to be able to give input on the values and standards that guide their work. Top leadership is still responsible for making the final call on company values, but by providing employees with a voice on the standards that govern their work they are more likely to buy into these standards, which includes being held accountable to these standards.

Secondly, accountability should flow in all directions, not just from the top down. Peers should also hold each other accountable, and leaders need to be willing to answer to their teams, especially those under their direct leadership.

In one of the organisations we work with, one of the departments was underperforming. To get to the root of the problem the leader of the department took a mature, vulnerable step and approached another leader in the organisation to ask his team whether leadership was contributing to their poor performance in any way. His department shared that they felt powerless in decision-making processes and that in future they would like to be made part of decisions, especially ones that influenced their day-to-day.

This is a great example of practising mutual accountability. Instead of the leader only keeping people in the department accountable for the department’s poor performance, he was willing to listen and understand how the leadership of the department was potentially contributing to the problem.

3. Finally, promote open and honest feedback. 

When leaders and peers are willing to provide open and honest feedback to each other it becomes a lot easier to identify the real problem and collectively identify a way forward. Avoiding feedback on mistakes or standards leaves room for assumptions to be made. Assumptions often lead to a lack of clarity on expectations, and eventual blame between the leader and team members because expectations that were not communicated were not met.

In closing

Managers and leaders reading this might think, “Where am I supposed to get the time for this”. You’re right, this approach is more time-consuming, especially at the start. But as this approach becomes part of “the way you do things” as an organisation the time-saving and multiplication will become evident as you see deep trust being formed, problems and solutions surfacing quicker, employees failing fast and learning fast, and innovation taking place at different levels in the organisation.