Todays post is about the connection between involvement and accountability in team settings.
I was speaking to a business leader recently, and he commented that because there is little employee involvement in his organization, that there is also little accountability. People seemed content to allow "the chosen few" to make all the decisions - no one was clamoring for engagement - but when it came time for those decisions to be brought to reality, any plans just fell apart.
While I've worked in organizations where there was a healthy appetite for employee involvement in decision making, I've also seen organizations where teams were content to allow leaders to call all the shots. One client employee stated it pretty directly to me one day - "She's the manager - figuring all that out is her job. It's not my problem."
Sound familiar? Some people like to demarcate what areas are "their problem" and what areas are not. While on the surface this may seem like simple role clarification (which can be helpful), if you look deeper these statements are often symptomatic of a culture which doesn't place much stake in team accountability.
In my work, I've observed that the most accountable organizations (I'm thinking of Microsoft and GE as two examples) tend to put an emphasis on team accountability. Yes, an individual will have goals, but they relate to the success of the team as a whole. When we look at accountability only at the level of the individual, we can inadvertently create a "not my problem" culture where everyone watches out for his turf and while letting weeds drift into the territory of their peers.
When we build accountability at a wholistic level, we are operating in a systemic world view. For example, when your cardiologist prescribes heart medication, he keeps in mind how that medication is going to influence other areas of your body. If your kidneys will be affected, he is probably going to talk to your kidney doctor before he starts pumping you full of drugs. Why? If the patient dies then everyone fails. In medicine - thinking systemically is part of the game.
It helps if we can think of our organizations not as machines with replaceable parts, but instead as a living organism like the human body. When thinking about accountability structures, think about the health of the whole organization. When you are building involvement, keep in mind that employees that are empowered to influence the "total health" of your organization (through involvement in strategic planning, decision making, information sharing, etc) are more accountable than those who are asked to work with only one little piece at a time.
Enlightened Homework: Listen to your team for clues that you may have a "not my problem" culture. Note when these kinds of statements are made, and how others respond to them. Is there an opportunity to increase team involvement and accountability?
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