“Life is not accountable to us. We are accountable to life.”
… Denis Waitley (1933 – ) US Navy pilot & motivational speaker
For a detailed discussion on accountability, read ‘Accountability, An Ontological Perspective‘
Accountability is a concept that commonly pops when talking about organisational culture. Often the opinions are there is not enough of it. A simple definition of accountability is to be responsible to someone for something, which is obviously central to organisational effectiveness and success. Given the importance of accountability to organisational culture, it is surprising that accountability continues to be an issue, but it is. Why is this and what can be done about it?
Although often spoken about, it would seem the concept of accountability is not well understood. Here are a couple of basic ideas that take us down two distinctly different paths when it comes to setting up and dealing with accountability. Both of these ideas relate to how an organisation is seen in the first place. The first comes from a mechanistic world view and sees an organisation as a well ordered structure to be manipulated to create the desired outcomes. Much of the corporate world subscribes to this view largely without question. The second view sees an organisation as a dynamic flow of conversation – a view developed through a more post-modern world view and based on the idea that organisations are made up of human beings and are therefore basically organic in nature.
Using the metaphor of an organisation as a machine, accountability exists in the structure. Get the organisation structure right and higher levels of accountability will follow. The assumption seems to be accountability is defined in position descriptions and once that is clear everything will fall into place. This can often be seen when organisational leaders decide that a restructure will deal with issues of accountability. Unless there is more to the effort than the restructure, this will invariably create little change in the day to day observation of accountability in the organisation and is usually followed by another restructure in a couple of years in another attempt to readdress the issue.
The key to the second and more organic approach lies in an understanding that accountability exists in the conversational practices of the members of the organisation. Accountability exists when conversations occur where one person holds another accountable. In other words, accountability is a conversational not structural phenomenon. To understand this better, we can go back to the definition of accountability – to be responsible to someone for something. From a conversational perspective, accountability can be seen as the capacity of an individual through a request to establish a promise (commitment) with another and then ensure they fulfil their commitment. There are a number of aspects to this idea that have to be fulfilled to generate effective accountability. Here are some of the key ones. Firstly an unambiguous promise has to be made; secondly, it has to be clear who has made the promise and to whom the promise was made; and finally, one has to be able to engage in the effective practice of complaining (otherwise known as holding someone accountable) when a promise is not kept.
Invariably, it is the lack of these conversational practices that lead to poor accountability.
Related Concepts
Effective Conversations
Action Conversations
Making a Request
Responding to a Request
Assessing a Promise