Tag Archives | accountability

Accountability is Access to Vitality. Really?

By on April 20, 2012 in Culture, Employee Engagement, Executive Excellence, Perspectives, Trust, Uncategorized, Values

How do you have conversations for accountability inside your organization?

Personally, I got appointed the babysitter when I was the oldest of 4 children.  It has taken me YEARS of committed introspection into the topic of accountability and what is available out of being accountable, to bring any lightness to this topic.  I did name my company “Accountability Pays,” so I do see a light at the end of the tunnel. Unless we want to suffer the consequences, we are accountable at work and at home, however we define it.

What if we could bring fun, play and ease to the conversations we have about being accountable?  The conversations I’ve usually had were focused on making someone wrong.  And if you’ve gotten to adulthood, you already know how that plays out!  It is not pretty for either party, when being made wrong or making another wrong.  It is the blame game, sound and fury signifying nothing, some version of “If you were different, if you were responsible, if you did things like I do them then all would be fine.”  That conversation does not usually go well UNLESS you are committed to coming out the other side with both people whole and complete, no kidding.  One of my fellow thinkers on this topic said it this way;  “The relationship is committed to workability for everyone.”

If being accountable — all of us being accountable — were fun, playful, easy what would be available?

Some of you think I’ve been smoking some illegal substance.  No, I have not.  What I know from my own experience, and sharing experiences with others, is that when everyone is accountable (clear, focused, results oriented) then the entity (relationship, organization) exudes vitality.

Think about a time when everyone did what they were supposed to do and you experienced what some call “flow.”  Stuff just got done!  People supported the whole with whatever was required, without being asked, even if it didn’t fit neatly into their job description.  Almost every one can think of one experience like that, and it was memorable, but seemingly not repeatable.  Why is that?  What I just described is the experience of being accountable with fun, play, and ease.

Here are a few quick rules that I’ve found work to bring fun, play, ease — and therefore vitality — to conversations for accountability.

  1. Don’t make people feel that they are wrong for doing it the way they are currently doing things, even if you don’t think they are right.
  2. Engage them in a discussion of what is possible if all pull on the oars of the boat headed in the same direction.
  3. ASK for their impression of what could be done, and LISTEN.
  4. Assume that if they do not understand you, it is because you did not communicate fully, not because they were stupid/not listening/whatever you made up about them.
  5. Remind them of how great it will be when celebration time comes around.
  6. Make them feel part of something bigger than themselves, something that is important.
  7. Watch them come alive.  Watch them dip into their inner reserves.  Watch them perform beyond your expectations, as a valued and valuable team member.
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Transparency takes Courage. Build your Muscle.

By on January 27, 2012 in Business, Executive Excellence, Perspectives, Trust, Values

I have read and re-read the bible on Transparency.  On page 42 of Transparency, authors Warren Bennis, Daniel Goleman and James O’Toole state, “Transparency is one evidence of an organization’s moral health.”  Are these familiar names?  If you lead an organization, they should be.

So what is transparency?  Transparency is a choice, a value in an organization that optimizes candor (telling the truth regardless of the impact of that truth, fast and forward).  These authors assert that candor maximizes the probability of success.

Transparency has to be lived as a value from the top of the organization down through its toes, where it does the walking.  And it either walks its talk or it doesn’t.  Like pregnancy, there is no such thing as being partly transparent.  What would that be?  We’ll tell you the truth part of the time but not all of the time?  It’s up to you to guess which part is true, though.

Like humanity, this is a complex subject in application.  We have seen the absence of transparency in highly visible cases where leaders did not intend to dupe their stakeholders, reality just got away from them at Enron, British Petroleum (BP) and most of the global organizational financial failures that created our drop in economic safety in the world.   Reality was known in these cases, it was not transparent to those who could make a difference before the crisis.

Does transparency occur differently inside an organization with the lightening speed of the digital era, where things said cannot be retracted?  The magnitude of emails and sometimes-careless comments and thought, can complicate discerning transparency for actionable matters.

These authors assert that transparency begins at home, in your own organization, where you will build a muscle around being transparent so that when called for in the world at large, you won’t be left without capacity for it like BP’s ex-CEO Tony Hayward, who eventually got around to admitting BP was not prepared for a category disaster he called “low probability, high risk.”    They also call for leaders to empower transparency in both directions — enabling others to “speak truth to power.”

You do know what I mean.  And if you have built a muscle around screwing your courage to the sticking point to look into the mirror, and if you enable your people to show you a mirror, good for you!  If you have not, there is no time like the present.

Tell me your stories, your questions, your thoughts.

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Executive Excellence: Are you Attached or Committed?

By on January 19, 2012 in Business, Employee Engagement, Executive Excellence, Trust, Values

I am committed to conversations for accountability paying off in increased results.  For example, I believe that companies that care about the triple bottom line — profits, people, and the planet — are accountable and add vitality to the world.

But I am not attached to what that looks like.  In other words your version of the triple bottom line is up to you.

That I am committed to accountability paying off and increasing vitality gives me freedom to listen carefully for what is important to you.  It is the access to something.  It feeds my interest in you.  I don’t have to be right about how you get to the triple bottom line.  My ego is not in the conversation.

So what is attachment? Being attached may lead to doing things YOUR way, which might not be the most effective way, or the way with the highest ROI, or the way that works for the most number of people. Donald Trump’s leadership’s style is a good example of attachment.  You will do it MY way or hit the highway.   Emotions usually ride high with attachment .  Ego is very present.

Being committed or being attached are places you come from when moving a project forward or moving toward a goal.  Profit is a goal.  People and the planet are not goals, they are stakeholders in how you reach that goal. As a leader, one of the most difficult dynamics to manage are people’s unmet expectations about how other people should behave on the way to a common goal.

If you have been leading organizations for a while you are probably smiling that little recognition smile.   This means you have to bring people together sometimes to remind them of the value of civility, because each is attached to his or her own opinion of how something should be done.

When attachment is present, listening stops.  Progress is impeded when this happens.  What there is to do is take the conversation back to the commitment that is shared, and see what opens up.

Where are you attached?  Where are you committed?  Can you feel the difference?  I would enjoy hearing your stories.

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