Don’t try to hold someone accountable

Working with business leaders I often hear their sincere wishes:

? we need to strengthen accountability culture

?? we want our people to collaborate better

?? how can we make our teams more creative?

???we see our people are not so engaged. how can we turn it around?

? what can we do to motivate our teams?

The problem is, what is described above cannot be imposed to people. Each of these cultural traits resides on basic emotions, attitudes, feelings. Whatever you take, each of these behavioural changes require deep personality touch.

So, are we at all armless if we cannot get inside someone’s head and ?program? it?

In fact, quite a lot can be done, as soon as we recognise that expected behaviours are self-driven. So we should change the focus towards conditions in which people operate in teams and organisations, and assure these conditions stimulate natural emergence of expected behaviours and attitudes.

What about an everlasting dream of any manager to ?hold people accountable???I leave aside the way this question is set - just thinking forward about accountability culture.

You can expect accountability raising and being maintained only voluntarily towards commitments shaped by a person him/herself. No human can impose or force another one to be accountable for whatever. Especially for something those second person has not originated in a form of commitment to self or others.

Let’s take a non-business related example.?Please forgive me those who find below tropic of smoking and quitting smoking sensitive.

One can try to convince another one to quit smoking. There are million of arguments and same number of emotional ways you can prove to a person this habit makes no sense and only provides harm.

Until a moment a person decides him/herself - it’s time, - nothing moves a millimetre in that direction of quitting.

But this commitment moment is not enough. To actually quit, a persistence to keep your promise to yourself is needed. And no one can do it for you! None of another million arguments or emotional statements. Because it is yours, your own decision, independent from opinions or perceptions of others.

What can help you stay the course, is environment surrounding and supporting your quitting process.

Let’s say, your friends and peers who get to know your plan, do not test your temptation resistance. They simply do not call you to share a smoke during next days and weeks.

Or you decide to turn towards non-smoking friends and find time spent with them same interesting as those spent over a cigarette.

Or you find out that tastes are much stronger when you do not hinder your receptors with smoke, and you enrol for a ?foodie? experience endeavour.

Or you find someone in the same process, who is eager to share the journey, doing it together, supporting each other and praising each other effort.

All of these are measures to create positive environment which supports your commitment, stimulates to do another day without a cigarette, and finally get you where you want to be.

Because you commit to yourself, you hold yourself accountable in front of yourself, and environment helps you not to fail.

So, same in organisational environment.

An accountability culture cannot be ?forced?, this is already pretty clear. But there is also no ?magic stick? making people accountable.

What leaders can do is to create certain atmosphere, allowing self-accountability to emerge and sustain:

?? giving certain freedoms to decide ?

?? sharing a direction and empowering people to shape their path

?? never imposing goals, let everyone establish own ones pursuing the highest cause

?? listening to people’s opinions and stimulating different points of view

?? allowing mistakes and converting them into learnings

?? establishing practice of small experiments and scale ups

?? ?walking the talk?: placing own commitments and keeping them

Same comes to Engagement, collaboration, innovation, speed.?

?If you want to raise a tree, you do not pull upwards a small plant to make it grow. You water it, you fertilise it, you create best conditions to grow, blossom and give fruits.? I do not remember where I read it, neither if I represent it same way I read. But it is the greatest metaphor to what I tried to describe above.

Let’s grow a beautiful garden. Or better forest! We have enough reach soil, plenty of water, sun and fertilisers if we need them.