Lead With Accountability
By Matthew G. Brandt
How do we lead with accountability- Accountability is the best and most efficient way to instill organization wide performance that keeps everyone on the same playing field. You see, in society there are classes of people, let’s face it; there just is. There are people that are very influential, usually financially sound, and normally are leaders in their communities, business lines and their families. From there, it becomes divided in phases in a downward departing graph.
Organizations are not like society however. Organizations exist for one purpose; to carry out the mission of that organization. We all play at different levels and in different positions, but the desired outcome is the same. Be it selling more widgets, manufacturing more whatever, helping people do this or that, fixing this, repairing that, whatever…. It’s the mission of the organization to do “something.” That in turn, has a return to organization that allows it to make money. They then are able to pay those employees for their work and efforts towards that end.
It’s About Changing Behavior
People in your organization, your employees, whether they are in the hierarchy line above or below you it doesn’t really matter. They own pieces of your cultural. Accountability is an organization wide mantra. It must be adhered to, and supported. It must become part of the cultural mindset of your organization. From top to bottom; from CEO to the custodian. Being accountable both at work as well as away from work is a cultural application. Once instilled, it will begin to build productivity and returns on investment ten-fold.
Once employees understand, see, believe, and watch accountability being practiced by supervisors, leaders, and their peers, then they will follow suit. That however is sometimes a difficult road to drive. Some people simply don’t have it in their DNA and struggle with it every day. It’s just who they are. Those are the ones we need to strive to not hire in the first place. They are the ones we need to root out from the mass and provide them opportunities to succeed in another organization, like your competitor.
Lead With Accountability
Whether your organization is one that takes every breath in and out with a culture of accountability or yours is one that is anxiously in need of a reboot in this department, it all begins and ends with the leaders of the organization. Without full and unabated implementation and application of a cultural mindset of accountability, it will not only fail, it will be worse than it was before.
There is nothing more damaging to an organization than a leader or leaders that claim to be accountable and have expectations that those below him/her will do the same and then find that the leadership in some way does not play by those same rules. You will turn fantastic employees into the least productive, most disgruntled of any you have.
Add in a generation of up and coming Millennials and Generation Z aged employees that already have a new and unique (to you) way of organizational needs, then any failure by leaders in this venue will ensure certain disaster for your organization.
Learn what it really means to have an organizational culture of accountability. It’s not a dirty word, it’s not a militaristic way of life, it’s not a discipline driven, culture. It’s one that sets the bar at the level you chose.
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