We’re a month into the new year, and I challenge you to consider: How is accountability playing out in your organization?
Maybe 2024 was a good year, and you’re feeling like you snuck by better than some of your colleagues out there. Maybe it was a tough year, and you didn’t quite hit the numbers you had hoped to achieve. Missed expectations like that, particularly if they have become commonplace in your business, suggest that you may have an accountability problem.
At the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas, like at most organizations, we talk about accountability. In fact, the word is ingrained in our culture, as we built accountability into our values a number of years ago. We explain our accountability value as a “vibrant, healthy MRAA with a strong foundation that supports stellar execution of its mission now and into the foreseeable future.” Most of our focus with this value, as a nonprofit trade association, has been based on accountability for delivering the results we promise to our board of directors and our members. We’ve done well in this area.
We also run the Entrepreneurial Operating System, and EOS is big on accountability. It calls its organization chart an accountability chart for everyone to see. The system’s Traction component publicizes your organization’s 10-year target (the big-picture goal you want to achieve); your three-year picture (a strategic road map); and your one-year plan (to achieve your financial goals for the year). Each quarter, Traction encourages the use of rocks, or quarterly priorities, and scorecards, or key performance indicators, to measure whether your organization is on or off track.
Most organizations like to talk about accountability. Some put a variation of the term in their values. Others may even have structural systems that necessitate some level of accountability. And many organizations live up to their accountabilities by meeting their goals, or making payroll, or ending the year in the black.
However, most people fall short when it comes to accountability. Addressing missed expectations with direct reports or co-workers can create some of the most awkward, uncomfortable conversations. Layer on top of that the reality that most managers are not trained properly on how to be a manager, let alone on how to handle accountability-based conversations, and there’s real risk for businesses to fall short in achieving goals.
During the holiday break, I spent a good deal of time reading about accountability and how to grow and improve myself in this area. I recommend the books Boundaries for Leaders by Henry Cloud and Crucial Accountability by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler. These two books offer strong, insightful tips for how to improve your accountability-based leadership.
Cloud outlines what it means for you, as the leader of your organization or department, to be ridiculously in charge. He writes that as a leader, “you always get what you create and what you allow,” and that “sometimes even with all of that energy spent, results are negatively affected by the ways that different people function, both in teams and individuals.”
He continues: “Too often such ‘soft’ issues become ingrained patterns that determine how the business itself looks and functions.”
Herein lies the real challenge with a lack of accountability. When we fail to address missed expectations, we encourage more missed expectations. It’s a recipe for potential disaster, especially when the business climate takes a negative turn.
The tools Cloud offers to coach and lead your team are great. And when you’re ready to take the plunge into some highly specific, actionable accountability tactics, Crucial Accountability offers numerous easy-to-use, practical tips and tools for “resolving violated expectations, broken commitments and bad behavior.”
The authors share easy-to-remember approaches such as CPR: Talk about the content of the missed expectation, the pattern as the problem, or the impact the missed expectation has on your relationship. They also outline a framework that you can use to address all accountability-related issues. Within that framework, they explain how missed expectations can surface as motivation issues or ability issues, and they further break those issues down into personal, social or structural challenges that you can help employees navigate.
One of Crucial Accountability’s best features is the real-world examples that illustrate key points. Many of the examples match past conversations I’ve heard about or experienced myself. The advice to get to the heart of accountability in each scenario provides great insight into how you can handle similar conversations.
Accountability doesn’t have to be scary. It begins with setting expectations — clear, time-bound expectations for commitments to be met. Agree on that plan, and then follow up with that plan. When expectations are missed, you’ll need to describe the gap between those expectations and the reality, and along the way, you’ll likely need to know how to make it a safe discussion. These tactics (and many others) are all in these books that I highly recommend.
Matt Gruhn is president of the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas.
