The Mindset, Culture, & Process of Accountability

Robert "Cujo" Teschner Teschner is a former F-15 and F-22 fighter pilot who used to teach at the Air Force “Top Gun” program. He designed the accountability module for that program, and it has since become his mission in life to take what he taught there and make teams in #businesses across the world as effective as possible.

Cujo has spoken to more than 400 #Vistage groups and is the current speaker of the year for Vistage. He is the founder and CEO of VMax Group, an international #leadership training company. As a successful entrepreneur, he deeply appreciates the role that small businesses and non-profits play in the U.S. economy. He’s also a classically trained violin and piano player and has authored/co-authored three nationally best-selling books.

Before I summarize the powerful information and tools that Cujo presented to Vistage NYC members, I want to know what comes to mind when you hear "accountability."

• What is your level of satisfaction with accountability in your business?
• Does your company do it well?
• Consistently?
• In all situations?

If you aren’t actively practicing accountability, if team members are afraid of accountability, and if you don’t have a mindset, culture, and process of accountability, then you aren’t achieving your full potential.?

?CURRENT REALITY

Cujo says, “Accountability is practiced the wrong way at the team level because it’s become weaponized.” It is usually only applied in situations of failure and blame. That is almost as bad as simply not practicing accountability.?

In the Air Force, he learned and taught accountability as the place where the team goes to learn. Not to punish, not to blame, not to shame.

?Humanness makes accountability difficult but it is also humans that make accountability so essential. ?

He shares some statistics from Gallup’s most recent State of The Global Workplace: 2023 Report:

·???????23% of employees are thriving at work, an improvement from 6 months prior

·???????59% are quiet quitting

·???????18% are loud quitting, taking actions to harm organizations

This is the current reality in large part because of breakdowns in leadership. If you’re management team is leading as it did 5 years ago, then they are behind the times. A leadership mentality of scarcity is one of the biggest obstacles that businesses need to overcome. If you don’t believe it, it can’t happen.

TACTICAL PLANNING & ACCOUNTABILITY

Tactical planning is required for accountability because if actions aren’t planned well enough, then the conditions for accountability haven’t been established. It is in planning that the conditions for success are set.

Accountability has never been more necessary. It is the single most effective tool in driving performance, trust, commitment, and justice.

Most current models of accountability can be summarized as asking what went well and what didn’t. They are the wrong questions, and they don’t identify the root cause. It isn’t accountability.

Sometimes accountability is seen as a private matter. Private accountability doesn’t necessarily serve or advance the cause of the team—and unless you are a one-person operation, the team is where accountability needs to be practiced. Performance is a team issue; real learning happens together.

?The two points of emphasis that Cujo believes in and presents to business leaders all over the world are: ?

1.?????How to Plan Effectively at the Tactical Level

2.?????Debrief: High-Performance Accountability

Cujo acknowledges that it is a difficult time to lead. We live in a moment of epic divide, little empathy, and zero inclination to understand in a fractured society. He thinks that one of the great burdens of leadership is to provide optimism and a path forward.

Embracing accountability as where we go to learn can make it a competitive advantage amidst all the disruption we experience professionally and socially.

Cujo defines accountability as taking absolute ownership of the outcomes the team achieves. It is not just about the fulfillment of individual responsibility.

Take away—Accountability: done well, it’s where teams go to learn

Accountability is not just a process…it’s an operating system that consists of mindset, process, and culture.

?DEBRIEF To WIN

Cujo and Vmax Group help teams implement purpose, culture, behaviors, organizational design, lifestyles, and resilience. Of all they provide, one of the tools that most impresses CEOs and executives is the debrief.

The debrief is a tool that must occur within the context of psychological safety and vulnerability. Psychological safety, as defined by Dr. Timothy Clark in his book, The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety, is an environment of rewarded vulnerability. Vulnerability is the ability to be honest without being punished. These are essential pieces to absolute ownership for outcomes. This is what allows teams to implement real accountability.

Teams that practice effective debriefs have a 20-25% performance boost.

The debrief is the only form of accountability capable of being implemented during disruption. ?All businesses must understand that no mission is complete until the mission is debriefed. The motivation is to learn from mission to mission and refuse to perpetuate a flawed status quo. The debrief is NOT to punish; it is to be resilient. It inspires optimism and hope for a better tomorrow and acknowledges the level of complexity that the team is operating within.

Takeaway: Debrief wins and failures! Acknowledge when it is “luck,” not a result of a strategy. Acknowledge when it is a failure and that it wasn’t a result of an intentional attack or criminal behavior.

SUMMARY

According to Andrew Robertson and Nate Dvorak,

“Only 26% of employees strongly agree that the feedback they receive helps them do their work better.”

To be truly competitive in an ever-changing world this number must change.

The information presented here is just a tiny portion of the tremendous experience and wisdom that Cujo has to share with businesses. The conditions for a successful team and all the elements of a complete “flight plan,” allowing for true accountability, are further laid out in Cujo’s book, Debrief to Win.?