Accountability at Work

Almost everyone wishes that other people would be accountable for their actions and impact. Almost everyone gets nervous when other people start talking about holding them accountable for their actions and impact. Are we all a hypocritical or are there good reasons for this seeming paradox?

In contexts governed by good faith, there are two ways to be accountable for your actions and impact: you can measure your results against rules or benchmarks or you can tell the story of how you achieved your impact.

Noticing your results against fair benchmarks stabilizes your achievements in a world where achievements can get lost. It feels good to take time to notice what you have accomplished.

Giving an account - telling a story - of how you achieved your impact is almost synonymous with human nature. Human beings are creatures who tell the stories of their lives - and live the stories they tell. We all love to shape our actions and impacts into stories that tell us what we have done, what we did not do, and what relationships we have formed.

We all naturally want to find ourselves in contexts governed by good faith where it will feel good to be accountable for our own actions and be motivating to hold others accountable for theirs.

Are you working in a context governed by good faith?