People who have never been held accountable are scared of being held accountable. In most organizations, people are assigned accountability for activities or to oversee activities rather than being assigned accountability for results. Additionally, most people hold themselves accountable for activities not results.
When people are accountable for results they have to deliver. If they do not, they are failing at their job, and there are consequences, real or perceived. Only a small percentage of people who comprise the workforce have this kind of accountability. For example, commissioned sales people; commissioned sales people cannot feed their families if they do not sell and attain their quotas.
I assert that people, me included, resist accountability because they fear not being able to produce the desired results. They fear that they will fail, look bad and have to deal with the consequences. Fear of accountability causes real obstacles for an organization’s ability to improve performance.
Accountability causes terror. However on the other side of terror is freedom. If you are accountable you do not spend time blaming or justifying. You can focus and engage in creating results by looking at what steps you need to take to produce the desired result.
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Very good!
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