Encyclopedia of Leadership

13.3

ACCOUNTABILITY AGREEMENTS: DEFINING

ACCOUNTABILITY WITHIN ORGANIZATIONS

Inspired by Bruce Klatt, Shaun Murphy, David Irvine, and Paula Martin.

The Accountability Agreement helps leaders transform often unspoken and misunderstood

jobs, roles, and employment contracts into explicit expectations, personal promises, and busi-

ness results. It also defines a fair exchange of results and rewards among employers and

employees. To be accountable is to be subject to giving an account, answer, or explanation to

someone, even if only to yourself. Simple as it may sound, the concept of accountability is a

challenge to apply in today’s fast-paced organizations. This tool will help you do that.

THE KEY PRINCIPLES OF ACCOUNTABILITY

Six principles provide a foundation for accountability within organizations. Each is essential,

and together they form the practical theory that underlies an Accountability Agreement.

✔ Accountability is a statement of personal promise.

✔ To be accountable means you are answerable for results, not just activities.

✔ To be accountable for results, you must have the opportunity for judgment and deci-

sion making.

✔ Your accountability is yours alone, without qualification. It is neither shared nor con-

ditional.

✔ Accountability is meaningless without significant consequences.

✔ Finally and very importantly, every member of the organization is accountable for the

organization as a whole.

THE ACCOUNTABILITY AGREEMENT

Establishing Accountability Agreements involves sitting down with those to whom you are

accountable (e.g., employees, supervisors, clients) and negotiating a simple, practical, one- to

two-page agreement consisting of seven elements.

SECTION 13 TOOLS FORLEADINGPERFORMANCE 399

Business focus

statement

Accountabilities

Support

statement

Measures

✔ Start by writing your highest-level accountability and clarifying your business-within-the-

business. This statement answers questions such as, “What products and services do you

provide to customers?” and “What is your unique contribution within the organization?”

[☛3.1 Strategy]

✔ Include a dozen or more specific statements of results(not activities!) that you are promising

to achieve within your organizational role. It is helpful to separate these into operational and

leadership accountabilities.

✔ Describe the resources and support that you require from others (e.g., your boss, your peers,

employees who report to you) in order to fulfill your accountabilities. In this way, the notion

of accountability becomes distributed; it flows downward and sideways, as well as upward, in

organizations.

✔ List ways that you will measure success as to each of your accountabilities. This list then

serves as a reference while setting operational and leadership goals. [☛2.7 Goal Statements]