Positive accountability

Why is accountability such a dirty word within organizations?

When we say I'm gonna hold you accountable, it feels like somebody's gonna stick over your head.

When I tell clients, we're going to inject more accountability within this organization. It feels like we're putting everybody in this big cage.

Why does it have such a negative connotation?

And I think it does, because at work, we treat accountability kind of like a game I played when I was a kid growing up in the Bronx called "errors asses up".

Yes, I did say ass on a video. Errors asses up.

I don't know if any of you who've ever played "errors asses up".

But here's the way it worked: you get about three or four kids together with a tennis ball or a Spaldee, remember those pink Spaldees. And you played up against a wall and each kid had a number. So if you had four kids, each of you had a number, I was number one, my buddy, Richie was number two, Bobby was number three, Jimmy was number four, each of us had a number, and you take the ball and throw it against the wall. And when you threw you call the number three. And then whoever had the number three, how to catch the ball? Well, if whoever had number three missed the ball, they would get an E, they missed it again, they would get an R and then another R, you get it until the first person who spelled out the word "errors" would now have to be asses up.

Now what does that mean?

That meant if you made that many errors, you then and hopefully with this microphone, you can still hear me I'll talk louder, you went up against the wall, and you put your butt out.

Hopefully you can see my banner, maybe not, but up against the wall, and then your buddies would each get five tries to take that tennis ball, throw it as hard as they can to hit you in the butt.

Now, very often you purposely missed the buck, because normally there's a lot of meat there, what you really wanted to do is hit a guy in the neck or the head or something that would really hurt. So that was a fun game. May not sound like fun, but we had a lot of fun playing it.

But let's go back to why I told you about "errors asses up". That feels like accountability within an organization, everybody is so afraid to make a mistake, because they're going to hit with that accountability tennis ball being winged at them. Neck but head where it causes fear.

Because the only accountability is that negative accountability. We didn't celebrate the guy who didn't make any errors. What we did is we beat the heck out of the guy that made the errors. Most of us are doing that within our organizations.

We need to focus on positive accountability as well.

Someone commits to us that they're going to stop interrupting in meetings. It's not enough just to hold them accountable by pulling them aside and say, hey, remember you said you weren't going to interrupt, you did it again.

Accountability is also about seeing them in two or three meetings in a row, letting other people finishing their sentences and then pulling them aside and say, hey, by the way, remember, you promised to stop interrupting.

I have to tell you, you're doing a great job. Keep it up.

Positive accounting countability is as important or more important than negative accountability.

If you've got measures of success, as I hope you do for everybody in the organization to hit, it's not enough just a whack them over the head when they're in the red or in the yellow because they're not meeting their goals.

What are you doing to celebrate whether in the green?

Positive accountability versus negative accountability, make sure you are focused on the positive, not only the positive, are there times to win that tennis ball?

You know, it's someone's butt.

Are there times for negative accountability? Sadly, there are. But I want to challenge you as a leader to find more times, more opportunities for that positive accountability. And all of a sudden you'll see that word accountability, changing definition within your organization, to something that's negative and punitive to something that's positive and empowering.