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I have been doing some research in preparation for a workshop on personal accountability a colleague and I are doing for MBA’s at the Fisher College. As I have been getting into it, I am beginning to notice more about what the absence of accountability sounds like when people talk. Consider the following example. The other Continue reading What the Absence of Accountability Sounds Like  Don’t risk being held to account for things you don’t know about. Take the time to find out what people really expect you to do, and what they expect you to deliver. If they don’t tell you, ask. I recently had a conversation with a manager who was disturbed by her inability to meet the Continue reading Convert Expectations into Agreements Laurie and I recently conducted a training program on The Four Conversations for a group of project managers. Since most of the managers were from the same organization, they all encountered the same problem when given an assignment. Rather than being told a due date or deadline by when the assignment was to be completed, Continue reading “High Priority” Isn’t A Deadline While flying home from a weekend visit with my son in Houston, Texas, I got a flash of insight into why it is so difficult to train managers to be more effective. I was reading “The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making” when I realized managers make a fundamental error in their understanding of what Continue reading The Fundamental Error in Managing Others If you read my earlier post on Incentives Don’t Work, then you know that Dan Pink’s TED video raises some interesting questions about incentives. In particular, he raises questions about the role of external incentives and their impact on non-routine, creative, or innovative work performance. His point is well made. Research has long known that Continue reading Incentives Don’t Work? Part II On September 29, I started my MBA class on Leading and Managing Change in Organizations. Unlike my prior classes, this is a mix of working professional and fulltime students. One of the questions I asked them was “What’s important to you? What do you really want out of this class?” Although there were a variety of Continue reading Motivating Others Is Easy IF You Stop Trying To Is it possible to build accountability even when you don’t have authority? The case of Myles Brand, president of the NCAA suggests the answer is yes. Myles Brand, who died September 16, 2009, was the former president of Indiana University and Oregon University. Brand left the presidency of Oregon to become president of the NCAA, a Continue reading Building Accountability without Authority One of the questions I frequently get from MBA students is “How do you hold someone accountable when you don’t have any authority over them?” One way is to use visual controls. Visual controls are a public display of the performance data for an individual, group, or system. The scoreboards you see at sporting events, such Continue reading Visual Controls Help Build Accountability No one likes to fail. Fail is a four letter work. Failing makes us look bad, and most of us will do alsmost anything to avoid looking bad. Yet, without failure, we would probably enjoy few successes. No one is a stranger to failure. We failed repeatedly before we learned how to sit, stand, walk, or Continue reading Failure is Important for Success – If You Use It One of the most frequent complaints I hear from managers has to do with accountability: “No one is accountable for that”, “Things would work a whole lot better if people were accountable”, “We need more accountability around here.” I agree, accountability is missing and most organizations could definitely use more of it. Unfortunately, managers are Continue reading We Are Looking in the Wrong Place for Accountability |
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