Understanding Accountability: Beyond Responsibility to Achieve Success (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: One of the biggest problems in creating a culture of accountability is that there are a lot of different ideas about what accountability is. For instance, when I'm talking to executives, they tend to think that accountability is a good thing and they want more of it. But a lot of people have learned to fear accountability because it's often used as a stick to beat people with. For the most part, our society has weaponized the word accountability. For instance, in the media, we'll hear things like, That politician must be held accountable. What they're really saying is that politician is to blame and they should be punished. But when we use the word accountability as a weapon, we're teaching people to fear the very thing that's going to help them and our organizations be more successful. Another thing that gets confused with accountability is the word responsibility. Responsibility is not the same thing as accountability. Responsibility is taking ownership of activities. So if you do everything on your job description, you are a responsible person. Accountability is taking ownership of results. There's a big difference. Here's an example. I once worked with a payroll supervisor who we'll call Susan. Susan was quite possibly the most responsible person in the company. In fact, when we would ask her to do things, she would often say, hey, would you mind sending that to me in an email so I can make sure to do it just right? We'd be like, sure. But I'll tell you what, any time that we didn't get the results that we were looking for, any time that things went a little wrong, Susan was the first to say, I only did what you told me to do and it's written right here. Susan would only take ownership of tasks, not results. She was responsible, but not accountable. And here's the lesson. You can do everything that you're supposed to do and still get the wrong results. That's not what we're after. Being responsible is good, but being accountable is better. Here's how I define accountability. Accountability is taking ownership of results and working to improve future results. If you'd like to learn how this definition of accountability can transform your organization, check out my book, How Leaders Can Inspire Accountability.