Would you be surprised if we told you that the foregoing represents a fairly common experience for most organizations? Too many leaders in today’s organizations fail to clearly define, fully disseminate, and adequately discuss the top three or four key results that will ensure their organization’s sustainability. Has your organization defined the key results it must deliver to ensure its sustainability? Do the people in your organization clearly understand these key results? If not, begin changing things today. Your organization’s key results should be meaningful, measureable, and memorable for everyone in the organization. By meaningful, we mean results that can ensure the organization’s sustainability and be readily tied to every employee’s individual role and responsibilities. By measureable, we mean results that can be effectively quantified and frequently checked. By memorable, we mean results that can be easily remembered and regularly used to guide daily actions.

When leaders neglect to define their organization’s key results in a meaningful, measureable, and memorable way for everyone in the organization, accountability suffers—because people don’t have the benefit of knowing exactly what they are accountable to deliver. People who have a crystal clear understanding of their organization’s key results consistently demonstrate higher levels of accountability for achieving those results than do people who have a less clear understanding of their organization’s key results. In our experience, people in organizations hunger for more clarity around key results, because they want to be successful—and they want to take greater accountability for what matters most to their organizations. To learn more about how to create a Culture of Accountability® that focuses on achieving key results, go to www.ozprinciple.com.

A perfect example of this occurred when we were building a family cabin in the mountains. We expected the general contractor to finish a large room with pine tongue-and-groove wall panels to match the other rooms in the cabin. It seemed like a simple task, yet when we stopped by to inspect the work, we discovered that the installers were placing the right material rough side out. Not only would the walls’ rough texture expose splinters to the unwary child’s (or adult’s) hand, they didn’t match the cabin’s other interior walls. When we asked the lead installer why he’d chosen to place the rough side out, he told us that most of his customers preferred it that way. After all, these were the mountains. The thought of finishing the room with a surface similar to every other wall in the house had not even occurred to him. When we talked to the general contractor about the problem, he seemed quite surprised and confused that his lead installer made such a mistake. This installer was a superb carpenter and a real pro (Able), he was work­ing long days to get the job done (Willing), and he had done a great job mak­ing the joints tight and the surface well-patterned. But it was wrong.

Closer inspection revealed that the contractor was not following up as much as he should have, and the installer was making decisions with­out checking in with the contractor, because the contractor was often hard to reach. Appar­ently, the subcontractors had learned to compensate for their lack of access to the general con­tractor by making their own decisions based on what they thought would look best. And, of course, each subcontractor passed along information about “how things work around here” to new subcontractors on the job, transferring the general contractor’s organizational culture and its likelihood for mistakes such as rough side out. Accountability and Culture were the explanations for why expectations went unmet in this case. The cost? Three additional days of wall sanding to match the rest of the cabin, along with the time and hassle on our part to clean up the mess that additional sanding created throughout the rest of the cabin. The final outcome? Our unmet expectations were addressed and the problem led to a better accountability process on the part of the general contractor and a change in his organization’s culture to improve ongoing contractor-subcontractor-customer communications.

Adding Accountability and Culture to Willing and Able pro­vides a complete model for managing unmet expectations and provides guidance to those who want to hold others accountable in a positive, principled way. These four variables—Motivation (Willing), Training (Able), Accountability, and Culture—are fundamental to what we call the Accountability Conversation®, a process that allows you to deal effectively with people who are falling short on expectations, regardless of whether or not they report to you. To learn more about managing unmet expectations and creating the kind of accountability that produces ever-improving results, go to www.ozprinciple.com.

“Coerce & Compel” strengths are: Takes action and steps in when things go wrong, exercises persistence in follow-up, doesn’t give up easily, ensures frequent and regular reporting, communicates high expectations, and stays focused on the task at hand. Weakness associated with this extreme include: Intimidates others, overreacts to bad news, tends to force things to happen, willingly sacrifices relationships, resists a people-oriented approach, and lacks sufficient trust in others.

“Wait & See” strengths are: Strongly supports people, emphasizes giving people freedom to succeed or fail, places a lot of trust in others, steps in with great caution, builds strong loyalty and support in others, and thoroughly thinks through intervention before acting. The weaknesses of this extreme are: Avoids a proactive approach, strikes people as disengaged, makes false assumptions that things are happening, does not follow up often enough, tends to err on the side of not intervening, and sets low expectations.

Now consider the following two examples. First, a successful entrepreneur, we’ll refer to him as “John,” demonstrated all the qualities of the Wait & See style: a strong people orientation, lots of trust, and a preference to allow freedom, plus a hesitancy to step in too quickly. However, people in the organization did not think John was holding his international marketing VP, “Robert,” accountable. People in the organization believed Robert was independent, self-interested, difficult to work with, and aloof. They saw John as letting Robert run wild. Eventually, Rob­ert was allowed to move his international marketing team to Brazil, where he maintained his independent, self-interested approach to getting things done while John continued to let things happen. It later came to light that Robert was using company resources to conduct third-party manufacturing and marketing with his buddies in Brazil for their own personal gain. Of course, John felt personally violated. The trust he’d placed in Robert had been destroyed.

The second example is also an entrepreneur, we’ll call her “Joan,” who launched a start-up in the software development industry. Joan built her success on a belief that she was usually the smartest, most committed member of the team, engaging in whatever work needed doing. She never hesitated to ignore the chain of command, marching into anyone’s office at anytime to make sure projects were on schedule and problems were being solved. She was famous for questioning anyone on any topic in an effort to get results. That approach seemed to work flawlessly, until, in the wake of a merger, she inherited a larger organization from a successful but slower-moving company. Ever forceful and impatient, Joan acted precipitously to move people out of the way and force the organization into a faster operational mode. People in the acquired organization saw Joan as a “Tornado” that always left a trail of dead or mangled bodies in its wake. Not surprisingly, Joan quickly replaced the old culture with an environment of fear, where people hesitated to try anything new. With all decision-making firmly under her control, people’s motivation and loyalty sank to an all-time low. The company made some progress toward its objectives, but only at a snail’s pace.

Both entrepreneurs, each with a different style reflecting two extremes on the continuum, were hindered by style weaknesses that affected their abilities to hold others accountable. Acknowledging and understanding your Accountability Style can help place you at a more optimal point on the continuum. We call this point the “Positive, Principled Way” and consider it to be a per­fect blend of strengths from both accountability styles, which, of course, mitigates the weaknesses of each extreme. Visit our Web site at http://www.ozprinciple.com to assess your current Accountability Style more accurately.

Not long ago, Chevron acknowledged that it is impossible to create accountability for safety without getting everyone to make it a part of their job. And that’s exactly why Chevron now gives every employee, not just those at the top, “stop-work” authority. Anyone in the plant—front-line workers, contractors, and even onsite vendors—can take accountability for stopping unsafe work or identifying an unsafe working condition. The impact? Safety has improved dramatically within the Chevron organization.

Creating a safe work environment, like any other enterprise-wide initiative, can only be assured when everyone, in every job, takes ownership and accountability for making the workplace safe. Creating a Culture of Accountability^® for safety was the focus of the work with the manufacturing plant we spoke about in our opening example. Several months after beginning the project, we asked the plant management team the question again, “who’s accountable for safety?” Every hand went up again, but this time as an acknowledgment of their personal accountability for safety. No one was pointing to Brad; they were all pointing to themselves. Daily safety meetings were held each morning to discuss how teams throughout the plant could ensure workplace safety during the day’s planned activities and events and became the nerve-center of the effort. These daily meetings were also used to gather suggestions on what else could be done to ensure safety. The result was a deluge of ideas on how to solve safety issues and problems that had gone unnoticed or ignored for years. Creating a Culture of Accountability for safety requires engaging everyone, in every job, to “Own It^®” as though they were the safety manager and is achieved when you help people take the Steps To Accountability^® and operate Above The Line^® with regard to safety in the work environment.

To learn more about how to create greater accountability for enterprise-wide initiatives such as safety, customer satisfaction, taking costs out of the process, quality, change initiatives, hitting sales objectives, and any other process that optimizes organizational performance, visit our website at www.ozprinciple.com.

A lot has been written about BP and the gulf disaster in the past several weeks. Sadly, BP’s apparent lack of accountability for contingency plans if “worse case” accidents occur seems to be blatantly obvious. And look at the consequences—an environmental and wildlife nightmare, destroyed livelihoods up and down the Gulf Coast, and another blow to a beleaguered petroleum industry.  BP’s stock was the bedrock for pension funds in Britain—millions in market value has been lost.

The price of non-accountability is endless—missed results, tarnished reputations, lost opportunities, innocent victims, emotional turmoil, personal tragedy, unfulfilled expectations, waste, destruction, and untold burdens placed upon future generations. Sounds bleak? That’s because it is. Disasters like BP, in all their various forms, occur more often than we care to admit. And every one of them takes an enormous toll on all of us, individually and collectively.

What is the price you’re paying today for a lack of personal accountability? What about the price your organization is paying for a lack of accountability? What’s the cost, quantitative and qualitative? Think about it. In fact, fret about it until you decide to do something about it. The only way we’re going to create a better future for ourselves, our children, and their children is to become more accountable, one person at a time. And that means starting with you. What can you do right now, to become even  more accountable?

Greater accountability always leads to better results across the board for you, your family, your friends and neighbors, your community, your company, your country, and the world in general. Go to our website, www.ozprinciple.com, if you’d like to assess your own level of accountability—compare yourself to the average score of the general population. We all need to get better.

The process of taking greater accountability includes transferring the elements of our circumstances from “outside our control” to “within our ability to influence.” This is the very same process whereby companies create competitive advantage and people create opportunity—by beginning to influence the things they previously viewed as entirely outside their control. Nestle Purina illustrates this process nicely. A few years ago, the company began planning the systematic introduction of an easy-to-open dog food can, until preliminary market tests convinced the marketing department to attempt a dramatic acceleration of the new product’s introduction. So the Alpo EZ-Open Can team went to work, continually asking, “What else can we do to get the results we want?” They coordinated the activities at three different plant locations and assembled people from across several functions to accomplish the impossible. They cut market introduction by more than a year, something that had, at first, seemed impossible.

The way people take greater accountability for their circumstances and exert more influence is by asking the question, “What else can I do?” The repeated asking of this question makes it possible for people to formulate new and creative solutions that make progress possible. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased.” And stay engaged. When pesky problems persist, don’t give up and stop trying—or wait and see if things will get better on their own. You will never make progress by focusing on what can’t be done. Think differently, as Albert Einstein advised, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” Always solicit and strive to understand perspectives other than your own.

Yes, taking greater accountability to redefine the “uncontrollables” and exercise more influence upon the factors that affect your ability to succeed requires personal stretching and a willingness to see reality. But the benefits are more than worth it. To assess your own level of personal accountability, go to http://www.ozprinciple.com/ and click on “Individual and Team Assessments.”

Accountability: “A personal choice to rise above one’s circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary for achieving desired results—to See It, Own It, Solve It , Do It^®.”

Inherent in this definition of accountability is a mind-set or attitude for continually asking, “What else can I do to rise above my circumstances and achieve the results I desire?” It involves a sequential process of seeing it, owning it, solving it, and doing it, and requires a level of ownership that includes making, keeping, and answering for personal commitments. Such a perspective not only embraces a focus on Key Results that will sustain people and organizations but also an emphasis on Visionary Goals that can continually transform them. Consistently applying the Steps To Accountability^®—See It, Own It, Solve It , Do It^®—allows you to achieve both Key Results and Visionary Goals, which, in turn, revitalizes business character, strengthens global competitiveness, heightens innovation, improves quality, increases customer satisfaction, and drives sustainability.

Accountability for results rests at the very core of every organizational issue, initiative, goal, or vision. And it always boils down to getting people to rise above their circumstances to do whatever it takes (of course, within the bounds of ethical behavior) to get the results they want. Creating this sort of individual and collective accountability is one of the top managerial and leadership challenges facing organizations today. To learn more about how to meet this challenge by creating greater accountability in your organization, go to www.ozprinciple.com.

Everyone in your organization is connected by these accountabilities we have to one another. When your accountability connections are working properly, people feel good and accomplish more for you. The telltale signs of strong, effective accountability connections are:

• High levels of trust
• Openness and transparency
• Lots of feedback that flows freely in all directions
• People getting things done

In contrast, when your accountability connections are not working, people feel frustrated and accomplish less. They immediately begin to actively or passively disengage. Signs of weak, ineffective accountability connections are:

• Low morale
• Cautiousness and self-protection
• Missed deadlines and unachieved results
• People languishing Below the Line, finger pointing and blaming others

Want more trust in your organization? Then create greater accountability and see how people operate Above the Line and establish expectations and accountability connections that work. Want better communication and more open conversations? Then create greater accountability and see the level of feedback and dialogue increase dramatically because accountable people seek feedback. Want better execution? Then create greater accountability and watch how people take the four Steps to Accountability—See It, Own It, Solve It, and Do it and get things done.

Accountability has a pervasive influence and decisive effect on the transactional nature of the relationships we have with one another in organizations. When accountability is missing, things don’t get done. When accountability is misapplied, things may get done, but not well, because people don’t have the necessary ownership. When accountability is managed properly, things not only get done, they get done well—often better than you expected. Accountability can do more to liberate, engage, energize, and drive people toward ever improving results than any other single leadership or organizational principle. The first thing you need to get right in your organization is accountability. To create the kind of accountability we’re talking about, go to http://www.ozprinciple.com/.

In a recent public workshop, one of the participants, we’ll refer to her as “Mary,” complained that she’d been with her company for over three years and never received a performance appraisal. She was there at the workshop, in her own words, “to find out how to help the managers in her company to become more accountable.” By the end of the day, Mary had turned her perspective around, from organizational entitlement to personal accountability, by asking the question, “What else can I do to achieve the desired results?” As she was leaving the workshop, she said, “First thing tomorrow morning, I’m going to start actively seeking feedback from my boss and the department heads we serve.”

Taking accountability allows us to NOT depend on so-called “entitlements,” by making sure we get what we need, when we need it. Here are just a few examples of “entitlements,” for which we can take accountability:

• Making sure your annual performance appraisal happens in a meaningful way
• Getting feedback about your performance from a supervisor in real time
• Knowing what the next job opportunities are in the company
• Having a career path plan
• Identifying and requesting the necessary training and development

When you define certain aspects or features of organizational life as an entitlement—such as receiving an annual performance appraisal or getting real feedback on how you and your work are perceived—it immediately places those things outside of your control. Someone is supposed to provide them to you and, if they don’t, you become a victim and have someone to blame. In contrast, by taking accountability, you place those things within your control and ensure they can and do occur—in other words, “I make sure my performance appraisal happens,” “I make sure I receive the feedback I need,” and “I make sure I know where I’m going in the organization.” At the end of the day, the one thing you are most entitled to do is—to be accountable.

If you’d like to find out more about how to take personal Accountability in your organization, sign up for one of our complimentary Author webinars by visiting www.ozprinciple.com.