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Fix It

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Fix It

Getting Accountability Right

Portfolio,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Don’t live “Below the Line” where blame lurks. Instead, find and fix your “accountability gaps.”

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Despite leaders’ efforts to engage employees, an “accountability gap” threatens organizational productivity and growth. Management experts Roger Connors and Tom Smith help you determine whether you, your team or your organization face an accountability gap and offer answers enabling you to “fix it” by building “16 Accountability Traits,” such as using feedback, learning from experience, owning problems and keeping your word. Analyzing a three-year study involving more than 40,000 poll responses, this practical sequel to the authors’ 1994 bestseller, The Oz Principle, offers hundreds of ideas based on real-life situations to help you close accountability gaps for yourself, your team and your firm. Though the text is rife with too-cute terms and lots of consultant jargon, getAbstract recommends this useful manual to leaders, managers or employees who seek to do what they say and encourage others to do the same.

Summary

Living “Above the Line”

Widespread disengagement, complacency and a general lack of responsibility and ownership in the workplace are reaching crisis levels. Developing “Accountability” is the first, fastest path to solving this crisis. Don’t institute the kind of accountability that assigns blame and creates a climate of fear. Instead, inculcate the type of accountability in which people lead, own problems and take action to solve them. This “Above the Line” behavior leads to solid results. Most people live and operate “Below the Line” most of the time. They do the minimum, grow complacent, make excuses, blame other people and wait for someone to tell them what to do. When companies fail to address accountability, people point fingers and place blame. To create an accountability culture that leads to greater trust, higher engagement and better outcomes, start by understanding what traits constitute accountability and how to embed it in your firm.

“The 16 Accountability Traits”

Successful people, teams, and organizations practice 16 identifiable accountability traits. More than 40,000 professionals contributed to polls spanning a three-year period to report...

About the Authors

Co-authors of the 1994 bestseller The Oz Principle, accountability experts Roger Connors and Tom Smith run the Partners in Leadership consultancy.

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