Agency principals have been bending our ear lately about lack of accountability among their employees particularly in the senior ranks. We won't waste time dissecting all the apparent reasons for this perturbation; the root cause is simple.
You.
Let's look at the process. When you're in charge you set the priorities and give the orders. You direct, persuade, cajole, coax, and sometimes slam your fist on the table to make things happen.
Use any metaphor you'd like here - captain of the ship, quarterback, field general, teacher. It's all the same - you deliver the imperatives; they deliver the goods.
Except - and this drives you nuts, right? - a lot of things you expect to happen DON'T happen. The reason is not "accountability." Nope. It's because there are no consequences.
When you play a game and break the rules, the referee issues a penalty. That's a consequence. If you blow through a stop sign or exceed the speed limit and a cop witnesses it, you get a ticket - a consequence. Fail to meet the April 15 tax deadline and you'll be fined. Another consequence.
So let's bring this to your immediate world. At your agency, when someone misses an internal deadline, are there consequences?
Assignments and deadlines are ignored not because of poor accountability. The real reason is absence of consequences.
Oh, you say the referee, cop, and I.R.S. agent are paid enforcers and you don't have that kind of thing in your agency? Not true. You have someone whose job it is to enforce consequences.
You.
Every time you cut your leadership team a break you're actually training them to be un-accountable. You're telling them by your unwillingness to enforce consequences that it's OK to go out of bounds, run red lights, and fudge things. Why should I bust my hump to get it done when if I don't, nothing much will change?
Lack of consequences is particularly pernicious at the top where behavior standards are a model for the rest of the company. Staffers think (and they talk among themselves about this, believe me): Since the top people don't do what they're told, I don't need to either.
Some of us don't have the constitution to set and deliver consequences. But every company succeeds only if its workers dependably accomplish what's expected of them...or else the whole enterprise will eventually collapse.
If you have trouble laying down and enforcing the law, consider hiring a sheriff to help you clean up Dodge.
You know, in our ongoing quest to minimize discomfort, human beings naturally default toward the path of least resistance.
If you keep carping about accountability without establishing and triggering consequences, that may be exactly the path you're on.
(We can help you sort these things out. An agency owner told us he saved many times our fee by helping him confront the obvious inability of a six-figure senior manager who'd long since stopped contributing much more than an occasional funny story. Give me a call and in the meantime read Courage at the Top in the Management and Leadership section under the Articles tab on our website and treat yourself to Larry Bossidy's bestseller Execution.)
