Possibly. We also have the recipe for something entirely different – a mélange of secrecy, defensiveness and blame. To highlight the challenge, we need to understand the human instincts that kick in once we have been given something to own.
Attack and defence
One of my recent coachees described a recurring challenge they were keen to overcome – that of getting into entrenched arguments with colleagues about proposed courses of action. This individual was highly charismatic and prone to stating their beliefs early and with great confidence. Whilst there were benefits to everyone in the room having absolute clarity on where my coachee stood on a given topic, it also meant that any legitimate challenge from colleagues had the effect of forcing them to defend their firmly held position. As an antidote, we talked about the idea of ‘holding on to our opinions lightly’, especially as a leader, where scrutiny and challenge is an essential aspect of effective decision-making, and should be welcomed.
This example highlights something very important and relevant in today’s world – that once a position has been taken, most of us feel compelled to defend it. We have seen this truth play out disastrously on social media in the last decade or so, where not only have opinions been taken, but broadcast to the whole world. Not surprising then that today’s minds seem much harder to change, even when bombarded with those things we used to call ‘facts’.
Owning our outcomes
Where this is true of opinions, it is equally true for outcomes we are accountable for. Like opinions, accountabilities are another thing we own, and so the resulting defensiveness is the same. We own our outcomes, strive to achieve them and give them due focus and our utmost attention because they are ours. That’s the whole point of increased accountability, to incentivise people to go the extra mile.
But the wisdom of establishing absolute clarity on everyone’s accountabilities rests on the extent to which you believe worthwhile organisational outcomes can be neatly divided up and used to drive the right behaviours to support the whole. In my experience, this is not an easy task.
Balancing competing accountabilities
A story that illustrates this problem perfectly is drawn from my days working in entertainment retail for a company that disappointingly few people remember. As an Area Manager, I had overall accountability for sales in my twenty or so stores. I also worked alongside a Loss Prevention Manager, whose main responsibility was (unsurprisingly) to prevent loss and store theft. Given our two main accountabilities, you don’t have to be a crack psychologist to predict our behaviour. I pushed for fewer security measures in the name of displaying our stock openly, and freeing up time to spend serving customers. I did so safe in the knowledge that if we sold a bunch of stuff but lost a lot more in the process, I could invoke the law of ‘not my circus, not my monkeys’ and point the finger at my colleague – ‘Well, he’s accountable for that’. Similarly, the logical behaviour for anyone who’s key accountability is to reduce store theft, is to want to minimise stock on display or literally shut the shop doors (the fact that our latter-day sales figures resembled a retailer who had done such a thing is by the by).
In reality, we tempered these behaviours reasonably well, but did so because of intrinsic values, goodwill and an implicit understanding of the actual goal. The organisational machinery and accountabilities set for each of us certainly did not support or encourage this stance. In this instance, neatly dividing up the real goal into smaller accountabilities had its limitations, and we would have been better off blurring those lines or ensuring that an overarching goal superseded our own smaller ones.
It highlights the key challenge with an over-developed culture of accountability – that in specifying what you are accountable for, we inadvertently indicate where your accountabilities are not. Our slice of the divvied up accountabilities does not stand apart from those owned by others, but rather the slices are inextricably linked and require collaboration to get the job done. In effect, we own too little. The problem of ownership, and the drive to defend what is ours comes back to bite our organisational behind.
It highlights the key challenge with an over-developed culture of accountability - that in specifying what you are accountable for, we inadvertently indicate where your accountabilities are not.
The illusion of control
As explored in the article by my colleague Mark Goodridge, another challenge in any organisation with very clear accountabilities is that the distinction between ‘accountability’ and ‘responsibility’ is a muddy, but very important one. This is best illustrated by the fact that I could find myself in the unenviable position of having taken care of all my responsibilities superbly, never missing a beat, and still find that one of the outcomes I was accountable for has failed miserably. This illusion of having full control over things for which I’m accountable is easy to see through, but still plays out in teams on a daily basis, leading to conflict and interminable performance reviews spent trying to determine the validity of excuses offered for outcomes not delivered. The reality is that whilst an essential part of any leadership role, it becomes very difficult to pin down where the issue lies when targets have not been met, to the point where one wonders whether it is worth the time and effort to try.
The uncomfortable reality is that the failure to achieve an outcome can rarely be placed on a single individual. We only have to look at the history of truly impactful organisational disasters to know that systemic issues have a major say in influencing more local (and ultimately catastrophic) individual decisions. From Hillsborough to Chernobyl, finding a single scapegoat to be held fully accountable will often end up at the person at the top of the organisation – who is ultimately accountable for the company culture that enabled the poor decisions to be made. Ironically, this is often the person who is furthest removed from decisions made ‘on the floor’, and frustratingly, their stepping down results in losing a key player at the very moment they might learn valuable lessons integral to improving the future running of the organisation.
The role of fear
All this takes us to the emotional elephant in the room driving a lot of the destructive behaviours touched upon here, namely fear. It occurred to me that bubbling just underneath the surface of a good proportion of people I’ve worked with as an external consultant (whether in workshops, assessments or working with project managers), was some element of fear. Fear of not getting promoted, fear of being judged, fear of being sidelined for the younger colleague untainted by years of experience, or fear of not delivering or living up to parental or spousal expectations. My retail partner who wanted to shut the shop doors was fearful over what would happen if he didn’t meet his loss targets. Senior bosses who cover up issues do so out of the very real fear that they will be held accountable – AKA – sacked.
At its most basic level, we may simply fear being out of a job. It’s clearly not an unreasonable fear, but how can we hope to get the most out of our employees if their energies are first and foremost directed in protecting something as theirs?
Certain Japanese firms became famous for Shūshin koyō; the promise that unless you go berserk with the company credit card or made a play for the boss’s spouse, you would have a ‘job for life’. It’s a scary and impossible step to take for most organisations, but the logic is interesting. Target manipulation to make results seem better? Not needed. Reluctance to give upward feedback for fear of being sidelined? Not needed. Withholding information to protect own skill set? Not needed.
Of course, not all fear is bad. Fear that alerts us to genuine danger is adaptive and useful. Fear that that prevents us from raising issues, taking risks that might pay off, or prevent us sharing information, admitting knowledge or skills gaps, and working for interests other than our own is not. The danger is that an over-focus on accountability can exacerbate this fear, and not for the best.
The uncomfortable reality is that the failure to achieve an outcome can rarely be placed on a single individual… finding a single scapegoat to be held fully accountable will often end up at the person at the top of the organisation…
Solutions
This does not necessarily mean removing all accountabilities, but it certainly does require a change in how accountabilities are structured, discharged, and assessed. It also means an honest assessment of the likely defensive behaviours that will ensue if we clearly specify what someone is accountable for, and reward them for it healthily.
There are a few ways in which we can improve this situation:
1. Make the ultimate outcome the most rewarding
Using my retail example, if store profit had held the biggest reward for both me and my colleague, the point illustrated above would have been moot. Similarly, if the reward for company profit was greater than individual store profit, then store leaders would also be more likely to share ideas and best practice, rather than compete. Without taking too much of a Skinnerian behaviouralist stance – if you want to understand why people do things, look first to the way they are rewarded.
2. Build in ambiguity
Joint accountabilities, matrix working, and fuzzy lines get a bad press. But these also come with benefits, namely that it forces people to cooperate to achieve important outcomes. The benefits are often hard won however, and teams that are used to clearly defined accountabilities or even silo-working will benefit greatly from help and development in order to leverage the benefits of this ambiguity.
3. Avoid the scapegoat trap
When faced with the next organisational disaster by all means investigate what went wrong, but do so with the knowledge that organisational errors are rarely down to the personality flaws of a single individual. Look to the way the system and symbols influence and drive behaviour.
4. Hold on to your opinions lightly
Particularly true for leaders, be careful of fast and firm alignment to a position or course of action. The earlier and more forcefully we state our own positions and goals, the more we will strive to defend them – even in the face of new priorities or evidence.
Accountability falls into the same category as so many topics when it comes to behaviour at the individual, team and organisational level – namely that it sits on a bell-curve of utility. Be careful that in the drive to provide clarity and specify what people are accountable for, you don’t amplify negative behaviours that really limit organisational performance.
MIKE THACKRAY
Mike Thackray is an experienced and engaging Occupational Psychologist and organisation consultant, having delivered bespoke people solutions for clients in both the private and public sectors, on enabling greater personal and collective effectiveness.
