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Closing Accountability Gaps: The Communication Secret Of Successful Organizations

Successful teams cannot exist without accountability--high performance and accountability go hand-in-hand.

Accountability starts with understanding the truth and continues with the thoughts, words, and actions of everyone involved in your organization. In my book, Winning with Accountability: The Secret Language of High-Performing Organizations, I explain how accountability is the key to long-term, sustained organizational success. To create a high-accountability culture, an organization must be able to identify accountability gaps.

Execution fails when accountability--the process and language of transferring strategies into reality--is missing. If you have ever experienced a failure in a relationship or project, you may have found that, in hindsight, clear outcomes may not have been properly communicated to all of the players, thus there were accountability gaps.

Identify Accountability Gaps

High-accountability cultures are something you can see.

To illustrate this, let's take a professional basketball player, a star of the NBA who, at one time in his career, declared, "I'm not a role model. Parents should be role models."

We're not using his name here because that was a goofy thing for any star athlete to say. Because, despite what he thought, there were thousands of children admiring that NBA star, wearing his jersey number, and shooting baskets until dark to become just like him. In the context of accountability, even though he was a top scorer and exciting to watch on the court, you could see that athlete wasn't a star in the Culture of Accountability.

Now, let's turn the dial to 1993 and the confrontation at the Mt. Carmel Complex of the Branch Davidians led by David Koresh in Waco, Texas.

On April 19, 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno gave the FBI permission to flush the Davidians out of their residence, using tanks to smash holes in the walls of the building and then spraying tear gas into the residence. Agents then fired more than 350 "ferret" grenades into the building, but none of the Davidians obeyed the FBI's command to exit the residence. A fire then broke out and 76 Davidians, including 27 children, perished.

As word of the confrontation and resulting deaths made the evening news, Janet Reno stepped up to the microphone at a White House press conference. "I made the decision," she said. "I'm accountable. The buck stops with me." Her words were notable--and noticeable--because you rarely hear politicians speak this way. At that time, she was the first female U.S. attorney general and fairly new to her job. Yet, in the face of a tragic and controversial situation, she stepped forward and was accountable. You could see that Janet Reno was exhibiting an accountability culture that was the model for her entire organization.

So, what does a high-accountability culture look like? Accountability cultures do not happen overnight. The culture evolves from one person or event to the next. One common denominator is that in accountability cultures everyone holds each other accountable for their commitments in a positive and productive manner.

As mentioned earlier, if you had ever had a relationship or a project fail, chances are high that failure occurred because specificity was missing at the front end and expectations weren't clear. That relationship or that project failed because there were "accountability gaps."

Accountability gaps are like potholes in a road. The gaps are holes that need to be filled quickly with specificity before greater damage is done. Just like potholes in the road need to be filled quickly with paving materials before the holes become so large that they damage the cars on the road, an "accountability gap" exists when specificity is missing.

Let's take poor Max, who was hired by a large company. His boss told him, "Max, we're glad to have you on the team, and as long as you do a good job, your employment with us is solid." Unfortunately, his boss didn't tell Max, specifically, what a good job looked like (count this as one pothole). When Max headed the team for a major project, the boss said, "Get that final report to me as soon as you can." Once again, did that mean tomorrow or next week? Max did his best but the report was several days tardy in his boss's eyes (another pothole).

By the time Max was fired, his tenure was rutted with potholes, lacking specificity and becoming deeper and causing more damage as the weeks and months went by.

Max failed because there was specificity missing in every expectation and assignment. Nothing was clearly stated at the front end... and when there's no specificity on the front end, Max was set up to fail.

But, let's not throw Max's boss under the bus just yet. Max made a big mistake, as well. He "assumed" he knew what the boss meant when he was told to "do a good job" and to get the report completed "as soon as you can." Assumptions dig deep potholes and are great contributors to accountability gaps leading to a failed project or relationship... and these lead to bad feelings, which become a vicious cycle of dysfunction.

Accountability is a two-way street. If you complete a task that was not specific and someone is disappointed in your work, you are the one who is considered unreliable. You're past the point of no return. It's too late for expectations. It's a "gotcha" of the worst kind in every sense.

It is the role of both the sender and the receiver of the information to make sure all the potholes are filled before the task begins.

Use Specific Language

Avoid vague language such as "ASAP," "I'll get right on it," "I'll do my best," or "I'll turn it in by the end of the day." These types of ambiguities are all part of the Glossary of Failure... and every one of these vague phrases increases the chances of relationship or project failure.

Like the three most important rules of real estate are "location, location, location," the three most important rules in creating an accountability culture are "specificity, specificity, specificity."

Practice making commitments, using the Language of Accountability by saying, "I will do it on 'X' date at 'X' time." Rather than saying, "We'll have the project completed by the end of the day," tell your counterpart, "I'll have it wrapped up by Tuesday, June 13th at 10 a.m., your time."

Using the Language of Specificity will increase accountability and strengthen the accountability culture within your organization.

State It Once

A Culture of Accountability also helps eliminate redundancy.

Focusing solely on a problem and not on the solution wastes resources on redundancy. Everyone knows what the problem is... your energy and resources need to be focused on solving the problem. It may be productive to voice the problem once, but then it is time to move the momentum toward a solution to improve your position. Redundancy is not in many job descriptions.

A good example of the momentum of leadership would be a conversation like this:

Manager: "I've noticed Phil isn't coming through with his assignments on time... and it's getting to be a real problem for me."

You: "I've also noticed that, too. What's causing it? Where have we failed to set specific timelines and expectations?"

In pointing out that the failure may be on leadership's shoulders, you're looking into the mirror to find solutions.

State the problem once, eliminate redundancy, and move toward the solution.

Reverse the Momentum

Language momentum can be reversed... from any person in the organization.

Here's an example:

In 1975, a movie about a mammoth killer shark was filmed. The title--Jaws.

After this shark has eaten a few tourists, a town meeting is called where the mayor, the chief of police, the city council and some influential business owners are all in attendance.

Many see no other option but to close the local beaches to fend off any more attacks and more bad publicity. However, businesses in the community want to leave them open. This is the "high" season for tourists and closing the beaches now will bankrupt most of the community.

The argument goes back and forth between the two factions for several minutes. No ground is gained and neither of the two sides is willing to give an inch or find a compromise. The meeting is at a stalemate. The upper echelon of the town's organizational chart is stuck in the problem. The arguing is getting louder and louder.

Then, the gut-wrenching sound of nails being dragged down the blackboard interrupts the argument. Suddenly the room is silent and necks are craned to see a simple fisherman sitting at the back of the room near the blackboard. When he has the room's attention, he quietly offers, "I can kill that fish for $6,000."

That pronouncement, made by the somewhat obscure and low-profile fisherman (who was probably not on anybody's org chart), changed the entire momentum of the meeting... and also changed the direction and focus of an entire town. The simple fisherman had taken on the leadership role, and from that point forward, the town's momentum had shifted to assembling the team that would kill that shark!

That's the way it can work in any situation. It's the leader's job to reverse the momentum of negative interactions-- and anyone can be the leader regardless of their position on the organizational chart. You can reverse the momentum by applying your skills and energy toward a new, positive outcome. When a conversation is in the past (with celebrations as an exception) you are probably focused on a "problem" or, perhaps, assigning blame. However, by changing the momentum and focusing the dialogue on the future, you are now working on a "plan."

In short, you have the power to identify Accountability Gaps during interactions and fill them with Specificity. You have the power to identify when an interaction is "going negative" and reverse the momentum so that everyone involved in the interaction benefits!

To find out how well you and your organization are doing at preventing Accountability Gaps, take the free Accountability Assessment.

Excerpted from Henry Evans' book, Winning with Accountability: The Secret Language of High Performing Organizations (Cornerstone Leadership Institute, 2008).

About the Author

Henry is co-founder and Managing Partner for Dynamic Results, LLC, providing coaching and consulting solutions to companies and individuals. He provides performance coaching to independent executives, as well as those in national organizations, helping each achieve their desired goals. He applies the knowledge and experience gleaned from numerous successes and a failure in his own career, augmented by the knowledge gained in working with his executive clients every day. http://www.dynamicresults.com

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