Hardwiring Accountability

Something is happening within many of the organizations.

And it’s troubling.

There are many incredibly sincere and well-intentioned managers. Supervisors whose need to be “nice” exceeds their organizational mandate for accountability. Leaders whose need to be liked inhibits them from acting upon their responsibility to establish, or maintain effective boundaries of accountability.

They are unwilling or unskilled at taking tough action required to maintain discipline or safeguard standards of conduct for clients, vendors and “owner” employees within the organization itself.

There are those who insist that others be accountable and end-up being judged as too harsh or hard-nosed. This situation shows up organizationally as low morale, poor quality, customer or employee retention problems, higher costs and deadlines missed and missed again.

Given only one choice (okay, so it is a forced dichotomy) which quality would you want in a manager? Ms./Mr. Nice or Mr./Ms. Accountable?