Over the past two years I’ve been seeing teams fail because people are not holding one another accountable. People tell me they are scared of being perceived to blame and so instead they say nothing. I asked some people why they don’t hold people accountable. They responded with things like: “I’m really uncomfortable doing that.” Or “I’m not good at saying that kind of stuff. I’m just a developer.” And I empathize. I really do. I’m uncomfortable holding people accountable too. I’m guessing everyone probably is to some degree. And by the way, I possess those developer genes. That said, I still think these responses are phooey! Being able to communicate is a basic human skill. We all do it, admittedly some better than others, but just because something is difficult doesn’t mean we should stop doing it. How will we learn if we don’t practice?
Saying nothing rather than speaking up is the worst thing we could do. I see two reasons why. First, everyone has missed a great opportunity to learn something. If something goes wrong, and it does - often - then those accountable are expected to discuss their part in the events, because their knowledge is needed to improve the way we work. And second, restraint leads to pent-up frustration, even anger. Over time, perhaps bickering starts and fissures appear in the team. People start talking about others behind their backs, which really is blaming, and eventually what we’ve held back for so long probably comes blurting out in a damaging way.
So what’s really stopping people holding others accountable? Is it just a misunderstanding of the difference between blame and accountability? This is something I’m struggling with.
To be accountable means to accept responsibility and be answerable for any actions or decisions. However, to be blamed is to be assigned responsibility for a fault in a way that deserves censure. But this still doesn’t make it clear for me. I like to think the difference between accountability and blame is in the intent. Think of accountability as a handshake between people whereas blame goes in one direction.
The intention of holding people accountable is to understand, with them, the nature of the failure, its context and how it came to be. Those people questioning the actions value the participation of those responsible for the actions because they have useful information. And together they achieve clarity to explore solutions so that everyone may work to prevent similar failures in the future. The sole intent of blaming people is to identify the culprits and impose punishment. There is unwillingness to engage in a collaborative and objective analysis of the events. Instead judgment has already been passed based on a personal interpretation of events.
I think fearing accountability and staying silent perpetuates the very thing people are seeking to avoid - blame. Holding people accountable is not optional. We need to take it easy and be gentle but we must start holding people accountable. We shouldn’t overreact to peoples’ reactions. They may feel like they are being blamed based on their past experiences, so we must work extra hard to communicate our intentions as positive and constructive framed within the context of learning. And we must keep at it. Eventually the blame-free culture of accountability we thought we had will emerge for real in a healthier team with a new found honesty and integrity.
8 Comments
"I/we screwed up!" = Accountability
"You screwed up!" = Blame
The former is acceptance and the latter is resistance.
I think that it becomes easier when you take both accountability and blame out of the equation, and say "how did our system fail us?". The "system" in this case is our process/procedures/methodology/business.
When you do it that way, then you can have a very frank discussion about the failure. For example, recently we had a developer take 2 weeks to do a two day task. We could hold him accountable, or we can ask how the system failed us by allowing him to bite off more than he could chew without supporting him. The latter is a more productive discussion.
I work in a place where the failures are recognized and discussed within the team. Outside the team these failures are credited just to the team. We discuss the reasons without blaming anyone so I'd guess that we have some kind of accountability.
In my opinion this requires self-esteem from the team members. The ability to accept your own faults and mistakes. Even better if you can learn from them.
But, low self-esteem can be one of the reasons why accountability is avoided. Not everyone is capable of taking the critique, even when delivered in a constructive manner.
To respond on wpbarr, although I generally agree on the I/we distinction, one should be careful to always speak of "we". It can be misused to duck accountability -- by saying "we" are responsible, it could be perceived as "everybody but me".
I think the real effort here is to separate "I" from blaming. I think it is really brave when somebody admitted he/she made a mistake, no punishment should follow, but backup rather and support.
I try to be clear about this myself, when I made a mistake, I will not say "we" made a mistake.
-Trudy
Simon you say that communication is a basic human skill and that I would have to agree with but confrontation is something that is not a basic human skill. People find it very difficult to step outside of their comfort zone and make other team members accountable. As team members work together for a longer time I think that the comfort zone increases and it becomes harder for them to break out of this comfort zone. I also think that people don’t always make other team members accountable if they know that the other person is not going to handle the criticism/comment (I don’t think either of those words are correct) well. One must remember that even though people should come to work and be professional, life outside of work has an impact on their emotions which can impact how they handle being held accountable.
I can understand how people would say that this is just an excuse but I honestly think it has something to do with why people don’t always make people accountable. I think it is human nature not to want to hurt people’s feelings. Yes, I know this is a little soft and shouldn’t be the case but I think it is the truth and the longer the team works together the harder it becomes. What happens if person A doesn’t get held accountable for something that they did and person B gets called out for the same thing later on. This will make person B think that they are being picked on and become defensive which can lead to more bickering and problems in the team.
I think this is how teams start to self destruct but I’m not sure how best to stop it. Yes the easy answer would be to stop things before they happen but what do you do when they have slipped for a while. I think you need to shake the team up and I think the scrum master has to hold his hand up and take responsibility for not pointing out to the team that they have slipped. I think it is very hard for a team member to notice how bad things have become because they are in the middle of it. The scrum master is meant to keep an eye on the health of the team. How would I shake things up? That’s a whole other story.
I think objectivity has a place in seperating one from the other. If a team member commits to a task in a timeframe and doesn't complete it, those are objective facts, rather than just finger-pointing. It isn't blame to say: "we show that task with 8 hours remaining, same as yesterday. Are you blocked? How can the team help you become unblocked?" The person is more likely to feel accountable without feeling blamed.
This is a very well written article on Accountability!! Thanks a lot.
It seems a bit weird to quote Toyota right now but most other major car manufacturers experience Toyota's recent problems all the time - we just don't get to hear about them so publically. i could tell many stories about this.
Anyway - at Toyota they employ, everyday and at the end of a major project, what they call 'hansei'. Roughly translated this means reflection or self critcism. They even sometimes replace the 'C' (check) in the PDCA cycle with reflect.
Here the team discuss if the performance met expectations, if so surely they could have done even better. The performance objective was too modest. If the performance did not meet expectations, something was wrong with the original plan and therefore important to understand what and why.
In either case there is no room for celebrating what has been achieved even if the results are substantial or for celebrating the conduct of a noble experiment even if it failed. The objective for them is to either find out why it didn't work or why it didn't work even better. In short, with hansei Toyota has a formula for standardized worrying.
As Jim Womack said "Surely this seems harsh. Can't these guys just have some fun? But the sobering reality of life, at least for me, is that folks who worry every day about every thing are very likely to have little to worry about in the long run. By contrast, those who grade their performance on how hard they tried - whatever the results - are likely to be very happy in the short term but soon may be looking for work"
He forgot to mention that the guys at Toyota then all go to their local karaoke bar and get hammered.