It’s Always Time For An Accountability Check-up

Several years ago I read a powerful description of how to get accountability in the workplace. Stop looking for “them.” Those mysterious, unnamed, unseen colleagues who were somehow not focusing on the right results. They were keeping all the rest of us from getting to our really important work because they weren’t carrying their load.

Wrong. It doesn’t really matter if you work with 5,000 people or 5. In a drive to increase accountability, we can’t start with them. Accountability starts with me. Period.

Three Tips To Improve Your Own & Your Organization’s Accountability:

1. If you don’t hold yourself accountable, why would you expect others to be? Being personally accountable means bringing yourself into the picture. One of the best ways to own that responsibility is to ask yourself some fundamental questions as you observe a lack of organizational accountability:
• What is my role in this situation?
• What am I doing (or not doing) to promote the situation as it currently exists?
• What about this situation is in my control?
• What are my beliefs?
• What am I thinking?
• What can I do to have an impact?
• What can I do differently to have an impact on the result?
2. Give your own updates on the big stuff and ask others to share theirs.
• Know and declare where you are against your own goals.
• Share how YOU plan to do your part to move things forward.
• Ask how the organization as a whole is doing and make offers to help.
3. Make your daily practices matter. Focus on results, not activities.
• Have a system to track what you are accountable for.
• Always begin your day with the three most important things that need to be done before the sun goes down.
• Work hard to control your own time. Unless you have a very, very clear game plan for the day, NEVER start your day with email. Once you are in response mode, it is very hard to get out of it.