Most people think they know what accountability means and have strong opinions on the topic. We hear enough about it on the news –Congress wants to hold the reckless financial intuitions accountable, investors want to hold the greedy executives accountable and managers want to hold underperforming employees accountable. Demands for accountability abound, but what does [...]

Certain functions and roles have a much easier time establishing accountability than others. We spent a good portion of our careers in Human Resources. Although managers look to HR for help in building accountability in their teams, we found HR teams often have more trouble holding people accountable than do their business partners. A key [...]

In our post on what accountability means, we spent some time explaining the essential elements of accountability: Goals, Authority, Consequences and Measurement. These are focused mainly on managing the behavior of direct reports by encouraging managers to think though the underlying motivational principles that either promote or inhibit accountability. This article focuses more on the [...]