Tag: accountable culture

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

July 20, 2021

Mastering Accountability™

We can only inspire accountability. We can never bring it into existence by demanding it. This is the Principle of Accountability. And the only way to master accountability is to change the way we think. Accountability is not a way of doing. It is a way of thinking. Plenty of leaders talk about “holding people accountable” for certain narrowly-defined outcomes: getting a report done on time, hitting a performance target, taking out the trash, whatever.

July 13, 2021

Leading with “I Stand by You” Creates Accountability

An extraordinary instance of accountable business leadership made the news over the past week. It came from an employee, not from someone highly placed in the organization, and it was in service of the powerful accountability commitment I call “I stand by you when all hell breaks loose.” The accountable leadership moment came when Bonnie Kimball, a cafeteria worker at Mascoma Valley Regional High School in New Hampshire, learned that one of the students in

July 6, 2021

Accountability: It’s Personal

One powerful lesson that accountable leaders can take from the last few extraordinary months is that personal commitments matter. That may seem like an obvious point. It is not. It requires constant reinforcement, especially within leadership circles. You would be surprised how many leaders I run into who imagine that their commitments do not need to be personal. They say things like “I am committed to quality” or “I am committed to making this company

June 16, 2020

Accountable Corporate Culture: Did You Get the Memo?

How easy is it to believe you have an accountable corporate culture, but be 100% wrong about that? Too easy. Consider the case of easyJet. Do a search on “easyJet values” and you will eventually come across the following two sentences, posted prominently on the low fare airline’s “what we do” web page. We never compromise on safety. Safety underpins everything we do. That looks good on a web page, and it’s certainly among the

August 22, 2019

A Moment of Opportunity in Sri Lanka for Accountable Leadership

Last month, I wrote about how New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern stepped up and showed the entire world what accountable leadership looks like in the face of a crisis. This month, in the face of another crisis, I have a much sadder story to tell. As you may remember, Ardern not only vowed protection of Muslim refugees following the horrific mosque attacks in Christchurch, but she also made a point of visiting personally with

April 24, 2019

Krispy Kreme’s Nazi Roots — and the Challenge of Accountability

It’s likely that, before this week, you hadn’t heard of the Reimann family if you lived outside of Germany. And it seems likely, too, that that’s exactly how the Reimann family wanted it. Which is, if true, a major failure of accountability. There is a total lack of accountable leadership in the Reimann family. You almost certainly have heard of the consumer brands owned by the Reimann family. They include Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Panera Bread,

March 29, 2019

Truth Isn’t Truth? Really?

Without truth, you cannot have accountability.

Deception is grey. The truth is black and white. Deception and accountability can NEVER coexist.

People lie to try and protect themselves. People deceive in order to manipulate and try to personally gain something. Deception takes lying to a deeper level, often by omitting facts.

It is our responsibility to check the facts and to stand up to untruth and deception. Following deception blindly, when we know better, is negligence on our part.

August 20, 2018

The Power of Commitment

It is only the commitment from the leader to their people that creates accountability in the leader. That’s what creates the desire to be accountable in the people they lead: 100% commitment from the top. That’s what inspires people to thrive, grow to be their best, and, in the process, help the organization to grow to be its best. Commitment is what makes the greatest journeys possible.

August 7, 2018

Truth is Under Attack

Accountability and lying never go together. Accountability and truth go together. Lack of truth, fake news and alternative facts are flooding us. This barrage has eroded accountability in our society. What makes this really serious is that this barrage of lying is coming from leadership. Rediscover what accountability is based on and understand the slope we are sliding down.

June 20, 2017