The Accountability Blog

Love and Accountability

Working with leaders around the world affords me the opportunity to see up close what works and what does not when it comes to outstanding leadership. I have seen leaders who have built incredible organizations with amazing workplace culture. And, I have seen leaders who struggle to keep their best people, attract new employees, and build a sustainable workplace culture. Here is what I find is the common denominator of the most successful, most accountable,

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Gratitude and the Accountable Leader

What does gratitude have to do with accountability? Everything! Gratitude is one of the three accountable mindsets. Without gratitude accountability would not exist. Accountability is keeping your commitments to people. We tend to think of tactical commitments like getting a project done, showing up at a certain time, or turning in a report as being accountable. Those are responsibilities. It is the relational commitments that build accountability. Examples of relational commitments are: A commitment to

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A Leadership Accountability Check at Amazon

Amazon is in the news again, and not for a good reason. A recent report from Reuters says a trove of documents examined by reporters confirms the on-line retail giant “stoked sales of Amazon private-brand offerings by rigging Amazon’s search results so that the company’s products would appear…‘in the first 2 or three search results’“ for customers on Amazon.in, its Indian e-commerce site. This despite sworn testimony before the US Congress from senior Amazon executives,

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Appreciation For The Team

“They should appreciate that they have a job.” “I pay them to do that.” “You don’t need to understand why we’re doing it this way.” We’ve all heard leaders use these lines and more in the past. This is not the way an accountable leader thinks. The leader that talks like this does not appreciate or truly value the people for whom they are responsible. Is it any surprise that those people do not feel

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Facebook: An Accountability Crisis, A Question of Values

We are seeing a lot of headlines lately about Facebook’s decision-making, about its lack of accountability, and specifically about its leadership’s (often-stated) commitment to protect society by reining in hate speech and extremism on its platform. How serious is that commitment? A former product manager for Facebook, Frances Haugen, recently testified before a Senate subcommittee that, in her experience, Facebook  “repeatedly encountered conflicts between its own profits and our safety, (and) consistently resolved those conflicts

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Accountability “In Tune” at Gibson

Do you recognize an accountable organization when you see one? What does accountability look like in action? We are constantly bombarded with opportunities to help others. Last year several tornadoes struck the Nashville, Tennessee area. Those tornadoes killed at least 24 people and injured over 150 more. 50,000 homes were destroyed. Gibson guitars is located in Nashville and immediately stepped up to offer replacement guitars to anyone who had theirs damaged or destroyed in the

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Elected Officials Opt-Out of Leadership

According to a recent CNN article, some of the 97 Republicans who are not sharing their vaccine status told CNN that they don’t have the responsibility to model behavior for their constituents. It is the responsibility of the accountable leader to model the culture, values, and behavior that they are encouraging inside their area of leadership. So, by definition, these senators have self-selected out of a leadership position. If they’re not going to lead then

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Your Source of Excellence

Usually, when we run into a challenge, we focus most of our effort on changing what we do…and we make little or no effort to change the way we think. Yet the power of thinking far outstrips the effects of doing. It is only when we change the way we think that we change what we do in a sustainable way. This is a key principle of accountable leadership: Action always follows belief. If you

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Who You Are Is the Action You Take in Support of Your Purpose

Accountable leaders never tire of asking themselves a tough question: Who am I, really? They know the answer to that question is always going to be rooted, not in what they say about themselves, but in the actions that they choose to take. These leaders know their actions do one of two things: they either demonstrate full commitment to their chosen purpose in life … or they demonstrate commitment to something else. Recently, I was

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The Accountability Advantage™ … Fixing a Broken Corporate Culture

Here is perhaps the ultimate accountability challenge: Suppose you were called on to turn around a company in crisis. How would you do it? There never seems to be any shortage of firms experiencing challenges that connect to a deficit of accountability. The most recent, glaring example is probably Boeing, whose CEO just departed following a series of major problems related to internal safety concerns that were withheld from regulators and others. The plane in

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