Proactive Accountability

As a professional speaker, many times I’m asked, “How does accountability play into organizational growth?” Oh, sure, we understand if we mess up, we need to stand up and say it’s our fault and it won’t happen again. But that’s reactive accountability. What I like to see people do is apply proactive accountability. And by being proactive, you need to know what it is that you’re accountable for.

Basically, I believe that there are five accountabilities and I write about them in my book “No More Excuses”. One of the accountabilities is managing your space. We’re all accountable to manage our space. In business, we need to manager our floor space if it’s a retail organization. If we want to add a new line, we might need to take out a line of products to create the physical space.

But as individuals, we need to manage our personal time or space also. We only have so much time during the day to achieve what it is that we need to achieve. What activities are we doing that are not moving us towards the achievement of our strategic intent? Because if we can figure out what’s not working us, we can eliminate that and create space to then bring in new activities so we can grow as individuals and grow our organizations.

Accountability is something that can help anyone grow, whether you’re trying to be a better leader, whether you’re trying to grow your sales, or whether you’re trying to implement more effective customer service. Even on the front line, if you’re trying to be safer and create an environment with fewer accidents, accountability will come into play and will help you achieve what it is that you’re trying to achieve.