Accountability — Done The Right Way

Every effort to improve performance and results can be accelerated and facilitated by establishing a foundation of personal and organizational accountability. Furthermore, without such a foundation, performance improvements and result achievements often turn out to be unsatisfactory and unsustainable. Consider the following example of how greater personal and organizational accountability led to crucial and sustainable improvements in performance and results.

After experiencing a substantial decline in profitability, a well-known hotel chain began a journey to build greater accountability and alignment for delivering needed performance and results throughout the organization. Following one of events where Accountability Training and Culture Change had been the primary focus, one senior leader described how far they’d come in a relatively short period of time: “We were experts [when we started this journey] at the ‘Blame Game’ and sought out a library of reasons as to why our performance was not optimal. Holding others and ourselves accountable for results and actions was not something that was prevalent in our organization. The laser focus on ‘accountability’ provided in various events has helped us get back on the right track.” In a few short months, the company was not only able to significantly improve performance but also restored $40 million in profitability. Today, that company continues to operate at higher levels of performance and results than its competitors.

If you don’t get accountability right, you are probably not going to get anything else right. Creating accountability the wrong way only leads to what we call the Accountability Paradox: actually getting less accountability when you’re trying to create more. Accountability, done right, on the other hand, is an accelerator of change and improvement. It becomes the key to your ability to execute on any and all important initiatives—efforts to improve top line revenue, bottom line growth, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and others unique to your organization.

To learn more about how to create a Culture Of Accountability in your team and at every level of your organization, we invite you to join the Accountability Community at www.partnersinleadership.com, where you can review actual client case studies.

Accountability Training, Culture Of Accountability, and Accountability Community are all registered trademarks of Partners In Leadership, Inc.