“It’s Not You, It’s Me”: How to Create an Accountable Workforce
There are two types of people in the world—those that take on whatever comes their way, no questions asked, and move forward with success, and those that look to the heavens and bemoan, “Why me?” or “Why not me?” as they look for excuses and shift blame to others for a lack of achievement.
This carries over to the workplace as well, where employees, peers and leaders can all fall into similar camps. Some of us have come to refer to this as either being above the line or below the line when it comes to personal accountability and responsibility.
The concepts of “Above the Line” and “Below the Line” are the defining ideas developed by Roger Connors, Tom Smith, and Craig Hickman, co-authors of “The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual?and Organizational Accountability,” a 1994 leadership book focused on accountability and results. Above and Below the Line gave the business world a vernacular to address accountability in the workplace, and the books also presented a set of tools for managers to implement improvements in their own organizations. The Oz Principal was the first to bring this concept, or at least this perspective on behavior, to the forefront, reprioritizing the way that many in the business world thought about accountability and culture among?their employees.
Those that rise “above the line,” who take ownership of their actions and look to continually improve, are likely high performers and continually deliver quality results.
Conversely, those who dodge responsibility in their roles, shift responsibility to others, refuse to be held accountable—those who are “below the line”—may never find true success or fulfillment at work.
The thesis is very much about self-awareness and the role that accountability plays in success, with a model that divides humanity in half at a line that separates success from failure. Organizations magnify these individual behaviors as culture, bringing together a group dynamic that is based on the actions and attitudes of each person on the team. In this way, a company filled with energized, proactive people will, in turn, be an energized, proactive place to work for everyone.
And that’s just the start. Studies have tied these types of engaged cultures to better business results, long-term growth and safer workplaces. On the flipside, those that have disconnected, unfulfilled workers often have the negative cultures to reflect that. And the poor business performance that goes with it.
The good news is that managers today have the ability to affect change in their organizational cultures, often simply by supporting positive behaviors and setting aside negative behaviors.
Our firm, Ephektiv, has spent years working with companies all over the world in industries ranging from Utilities, to Software, to Energy and we have learned one indisputable fact along the way: People are all the same. Regardless of what industry you are in, or where you live, or even what language you speak, we all want the same things when we come to work every day. We want to feel supported, we want to have a voice in the direction of the company and we want our work to matter. It’s as simple as that.
So, over the years we have studied more than 6,000 people at companies in a wide range of different industries though our Field Research Program, a combination of surveys, appreciative inquiry interventions and ongoing fieldwork observations. Collecting this data about what the environmental conditions are when people are at their best, we’ve been able to bridge the gap from the qualitative to the quantitative when it comes to identifying tangible factors for accountability and culture improvement.
At the end of the day, accountability has to involve both managers and workers. It is not a one-way street. Leaders who recognize that and take steps to change their approach will reap the rewards of a truly accountable, constructive culture at their organizations.
Want to learn more? We have published a FREE white paper explaining employee accountability in depth, with steps for managers to take to enact real change in their companies. Click here to download it.