“It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one's acts.”
(Mahatama Gandhi)
The dark grey sky was littered with glittering starts of all sizes, the faded half- moon was hanging like a pale adornment from the horizon. While promenading within the secure wall of the residential campus I was engrossed in a serious conversation with my fellow companion. He was a bit miffed with his trusted distant cousin for the non-completion of a critical task that led to some serious complication and trouble for him. Apparently, he seemed deeply annoyed with the gentlemen he chose to trust. He concluded with the loud whining about the lack of ownership and accountability among the people in general.
I deal with the issues of responsibility and accountability on a routine basis in my professional milieu, I quipped when his temper watered down a bit. I told him that despite investing years in the business organisations, I am still trying to discover the hormones that are responsible for inducing sense of accountability and ownership in the Individuals.
The cognitive revolution of the human beings started almost 70000 years back but even today in the digital world of 21st Century, a good number of the people around us in all walks of life have the innate tendency to avoid the ownership of the tasks befallen on their shoulders.
I came across an interesting study by Darren Overfield and Rob Kaiser published in Forbes magazine with the subject line “One Out of Every Two Managers Is Terrible at Accountability” that sums up the story of corporate workplaces. The study of 5,400 upper-level managers revealed that the accountability was their single most neglected behaviour . It also made a startling revelation stating, that a whopping 46% of the managers under study failed to demonstrate the mentioned behaviour during business transactions.
The crisis of the accountability at workplace is real, it’s like a big elephant dancing in the meeting rooms, invisible to the intelligent minds sitting over there to discover the reasons of failure and decline.
Culture of Accountability : What and Why ?
According to Cambridge dictionary, Accountability is the fact of being responsible for what you do and able to give a satisfactory reason for it, or the degree to which this happens.
For me accountability refers to the ownership of the personal or organisational responsibility one has inherited or agreed to perform, it encompasses the graceful acceptance of the setbacks and fiascos one may encounter in the mundane transactions of lives and of course, it also includes the sharing of successes and accolades with fellow stakeholders.
According to the authors of the book” The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual and Organizational Accountability”, True accountability is the “personal choice to rise above one’s circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary for achieving desired results.
The organisation’s performance and growth is inextricably linked with the culture of accountability permeating across the hierarchies of work force. The sense of accountability instils a feeling of belonging within the employee group leading to positive outcome and successful result. It creates a conducive environment where instances of failure is taken as an opportunity to own, reflect, learn and move forward with a positive intent. For start-ups, the accountability of the employees is the springboard to succeed and sustain by building a relationship of trust with the customers.
Developing the culture of accountability
It is no wonder that the corporate organisations are spending the huge sum of money and time to develop the culture of accountability within the organisation through various methods of training and employee engagement framework. Despite the continuous efforts of cultural transformation by the corporate office, the results are not very encouraging. The complexity of the issues gets compounded for the start-ups as they may not have the luxury of necessary funds and time span required to implement a sustainable framework of employee engagement that may yield great result in the long term. I strongly believe that the sense of responsibility and accountability is inculcated in the child from the pre-school stage itself, that may be further enhanced, fine-tuned and reinforced with the aid of trainings, techniques and frameworks. The radical transformation in the attitude of the individual towards work and life is a dauting task to accomplish for the harbingers of the initiatives within a short tenure of the employee within the organisation.
It is not only important to recruit the “Best fit Talent”, it is equally important to create and implement the process of assessing the fitness for the role by measuring the performance of the individual against the core values within 60 days from the date of joining. If the employees has failed to demonstrate the expected behaviours and is not aligned with the organisation culture, s/he should be replaced immediately even if the process of replacement is painstaking and pricy. The impetus of driving the culture of accountability through open communication and environment of trust lies squarely in the hands of leadership team.
Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to the result.
(Bob Proctor – Author, You Were Born Rich)
Reference :
https://hbr.org/2012/11/one-out-of-every-two-managers-is-terrible-at-accountability
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