"It makes everything better"

"We can trust each other, we can have positive energy, but when we have each others' back it makes everything much better" Joel Goldberg

Saturday the Georgia Bulldogs lost at basketball, again. They lose a lot! The boys and I have had an affection for Bulldog basketball for years. They have a lot of players we like every year, but they just never quite get it together and win as much as we or they probably wish for. This year they have a new coach, but players who experienced some success last year suddenly find themselves mired near the bottom of the SEC, and on Saturday they lost again. Their coach leaned into the microphone for the postgame interview and declared "it's all on me!" That's accountability, that is taking responsibility to coach, to put players in the right position to succeed, to teach them what they need to know to succeed, to calling the right plays that they can execute to succeed, IF he stopped there. That is standing up and saying "my job is to help the team win" IF he stopped there. It would have been a powerful four word statement IF he had stopped there. But he didn't. He went on to say "I'm the one that decided to keep these guys... you have guys that haven't done it at any point in their career and they..kind of move on, that's not a knock on them, it is what it is." His brief statement of accountability devolved into a long diatribe of blame and deflection. Nothing was actually his fault at all other than guilt by association. I was reminded of the old Leon beer commercial where Leon says "This is a team sport, so I've gotta put the blame for this loss squarely on the shoulders of my supporting cast!" When I heard the Georgia interview I was ticked off, so I can't imagine what a player felt, or a players' family felt. You are publicly telling the press your only problem is you chose to surround yourself with losers. That's not accountability. That is deflection. That is blame. That is weak, and it weakens an organization or a team or a business.

It was quite a contrast then when the amazing Joel Goldberg stopped by work to talk about Championship Cultures, and his experiences watching the Royals build a World Series winning organization. Joel has had the opportunity to observe team cultures and player attitudes across the spectrum, and he has had a front row seat to see how a winning culture comes together. So while talent, energy and a multitude of factors come into play, he stated that accountability might be the most important thing with these words: "we can trust each other, we can have positive energy, but when we have each others' back it makes everything much better." On winning teams you don't look around first for who to blame, you don't obsess with what is or is not "my job," you don't publicly throw each other under the bus. On winning teams you focus on winning, on helping the person next to you win, on doing what it takes to help the team win. You focus on winning in public and then solve problems in private. Accountability is not blame. Accountability is not deflecting responsibility. Accountability is asking "what can I do to help this team win."

Joel had interviewed World Series winning manager Joe Maddon about his experiences, and he shared these thoughts: "Number one is to build good relationships, which leads to trust, which leads to the exchange of ideas, which leads to an ability for constructive criticism. If you don't get the first three things in order, we cannot be constructively critical or exchange ideas without pushback." These observations from two different World Series champion organizations are amazingly similar. Trust, relationships, personal accountability, and having each others' back fosters an environment where the team can challenge itself to be better, to do more, to be great.

The challenge then is for each of us to choose what kind of culture we want at work, what kind of environment we each individually want to be part of. Each of us creates a small part of the culture by showing up and choosing to be who we choose to be. We choose whether to focus on blame or accountability, to focus on trust or deflection, to focus on team or on individual accomplishment. Do we waste energy telling the customer who was at fault, or do we do whatever it takes to solve the problem? Do we jump in and help so the team cannot fail?

Chances are you have experienced the spectrum of accountability in your work life as well. We have worked with people who were "stars," who jumped in and did whatever it took to help the team win. And sadly we have have worked for people who seem more focused on who to blame for the loss, and less focused on getting the win. It is up to each of us to choose a path, to be personally accountable for creating the culture we want around us. We may not change the whole world, but we can change our part of the world. Let's get started!