The Accountability You Don’t Think Is Yours

I’m sure that if you ask individuals at a company, they will all tell you they are very accountable. What they usually mean by that is they feel responsible for their work, and accountable for the results, especially if the results are positive. Sometimes, when results are negative, accountability starts to fade and transforms into blame. That’s when we start thinking about all of the constraints of the project: the deadline was too short, we didn’t have enough budget, …

But we’re not talking about that today. Today we’re talking about the accountability you think isn’t yours to own.

Your accountability doesn’t start and stop with what you created. It also includes problems that you are promoting and problems that you are allowing. Let’s explore this in more detail.

— Mark Samuel, Making Yourself Indispensable

I read Mark’s book a few years ago when I was feeling stuck at work. I wanted to become a better team member overall, and I must say it hit the mark. Being a better team member starts with looking further than your nose. Further than your team’s nose if you are a manager.

What does it mean?

Think about yourself or your team’s behavior. Did it ever happen that you find an issue, but it isn’t exactly your scope of work, and so you ignore it, or worse, you mention it to other people in private, more as gossip, rather than actually trying to fix the issue?

What you’re doing here is allowing the problem to exist. Sure, it may not seem like it’s yours to fix, and you don’t have to be the one who brings the solution, but just surfacing the issue can make a big difference. People around you might not have observed things the way you did, and you bringing it up could be the perspective they needed.

So what’s stopping you? A number of reasons, a few briefly mentioned earlier:

• This is not my job
• This is not my team
• I don’t think they will listen to me
• I don’t think this is my place to say this
• I’m scared they will take it the wrong way

Some of them you can control, some you can’t exactly. For example, “This is not my job” is more of a personal mindset to change. Even if it’s not your job, it doesn’t mean you can’t help people around you if everyone’s life would be better as a result.

But “I don’t think this is my place to say this” is a mix of personality and culture. The personality bit is yourself: maybe you’re not very confident, and that’s something we’ll have to discuss in another article, because it’s in itself a vast topic. The culture bit is the company: how open is the culture to feedback, really?

New routines were introduced that made it easy to raise concerns, ask questions, sound the alarm or share proposals. Where there had been secrecy, now there was openness. Where mistakes had been covered up, now they were acknowledged as learning, and widely disseminated without shame or blame. Where there had been deference, now vigorous contribution was invited and gradually emerged from all sides.

— Margaret Heffernan, Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes (TED Books)

Another amazing quote, this time from Margaret Heffernan. This is her definition of what she calls a “Just Culture”.

Inspiring feedback

Now, whether you’re a regular team member or in a position of leadership, you can inspire feedback around you.

If you’re a manager, ask your team for feedback. But be genuine about it. Don’t just say, “I hear you.” You need to actually tell the person what you will do with their feedback, even if the answer is “I don’t agree with you” or “We can’t do anything about this now,” as long as you give the necessary context for the person to actually feel heard.

People can tell when you’re asking because you genuinely want to know and when you’re asking because it sounds like the right thing to do. Try to understand where they’re coming from. Ask questions.

But what will make the biggest difference is simply making it a habit to bring up issues. This is something Gino Wickman talks about in Traction, through the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). One of the practices he recommends is a weekly meeting called the “Level 10 Meeting,” which includes a dedicated section for issues. The idea is simple: everyone gets the opportunity to bring up problems they’ve noticed, and the team works through them using a process called IDS: Identify, Discuss, Solve. I won’t go into the whole system here, and I recommend reading the book if you’re interested, but I like this particular idea because it turns speaking up into a habit. You don’t have to wait for the perfect moment to bring something up, or wonder whether it’s important enough to mention. There’s already a place for it.

If you’re a team member and you notice something that doesn’t seem right, don’t immediately dismiss it because it’s “not your job”. You don’t have to solve it yourself. Start by bringing it to the person who might be able to do something about it.

If a meeting isn’t the right place to raise it, talk to your manager afterwards. If you’re not sure whether it’s worth mentioning, you can simply ask a question rather than making an accusation.

These are small things. But that’s how a culture changes. The more people feel comfortable raising concerns, the earlier problems can be identified. The earlier they are identified, the easier they usually are to solve. And the more people see that speaking up leads to a constructive response, the more likely they are to do it again.

Final words

Accountability doesn’t mean owning everything. It means caring enough to do something with what you see.

Sometimes that means solving the problem yourself. Sometimes it means raising your hand and saying, “I think we have a problem here.”

And sometimes, that’s enough.