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The Accountable Leader
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The Accountable Leader

Developing Effective Leadership through Managerial Accountability

Brian Dive
Kogan Page, 2008
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Take the most capable, brilliant, hard-working managers you can find. Put them in a flawed organizational scheme, where individuals have no real accountability. The end result: failure for the managers and the organization. Management consultant Brian Dive contends that many companies fail to devise organizational structures that make executives and managers fully accountable for their decisions and actions, or that tie their performance to specific goals. Dive says such firms become inflated and bureaucratic. They end up rewarding people on the basis of arbitrary criteria that have little or nothing to do with their objectives. Dive claims that leadership requires real accountability, which in turn requires sound organizational design. Having posited this necessity, he then tells you how to analyze your management structure. getAbstract recommends his practical approach to developing a framework that lets your leaders lead.

Summary

Lack of Accountability: A Basic Problem of Leadership

Many would-be leaders fail to make real contributions to their organizations. Often, this has nothing to do with their efforts, but results from organizational problems they cannot control. In effect, their companies’ structures work against them. They have no accountability and, thus, no guideposts for efficient operations.

Organizations spend significant resources to ensure that their managers are highly trained and capable, yet they tend to place those managers in positions of authority with no real accountability. Without accountability, the managers inevitably fail. When that happens, upper-level executives often mistakenly assume that, despite glowing resumes and past achievements, these managers are incompetent. Usually, the managers are not at fault; generally the problem is a lack of accountability for specified, measurable results. But tracking whether meaningful responsibilities are fulfilled requires a savvy organizational structure that rewards leadership.

Accountable managers have to develop clear priorities so they can make effective, timely, traceable decisions. Organizations that institute...

About the Author

Brian Dive is a manager, consultant and writer who has worked on various business assignments in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

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