When errors such as these surface, blaming seems to be a natural reflex in many organizations. Even those individuals who wish to learn from mistakes fall into naming culprits. Once we figure out who’s at fault, we then try to find out what is wrong with the supposed offenders. Only when we discover what is wrong with them do we feel we have grasped the problem. Clearly they are the problem, and changing or getting rid of them (or simply being angry at them) is the solution.

There’s a problem with this common scenario, however: Where there is blame, there is no learning. Where there is blame, open minds close, inquiry tends to cease, and the desire to understand the whole system diminishes. When people work in an atmosphere of blame, they naturally cover up their errors and hide their real concerns. And when energy goes into finger pointing, scapegoating, and denying responsibility, productivity suffers because the organization lacks information about the real state of affairs. It’s impossible to make good decisions with poor information.

In fact, blame costs money. When the vice president of marketing and the vice president of R&D are blaming each other for quality problems in product development, they can’t focus on working together to bring the best products to market. Their finger pointing results in lost sales potential.

Blame rarely enhances our understanding of our situation and often hampers effective problem solving. So how do we avoid the tendency to blame and create organizational environments where we turn less frequently to blame? Clarifying accountability is one option. This process of assigning responsibilities for a situation in advance can help create a culture of real learning.

Accountability comes from clear contracting, ongoing conversations, and an organizational commitment to support accountability rather than blame. The contracting focuses on tasks to be accomplished, roles to be taken, processes to be used, standards sought, and expected results. Periodic conversations over time review both explicit and tacit contracts in order to verify shared understanding. This communication becomes most useful when people are willing and able to discuss their common difficulties within a larger setting that values accountability.

The Differences Between Accountability and Blame

The dictionary helps clarify the differences between accountability and blame. To be accountable is “to be counted on or reckoned on.” To blame is “to find fault with, to censure, revile, reproach.” Accountability emphasizes keeping agreements and performing jobs in a respectful atmosphere; blaming is an emotional process that discredits the blamed.

A focus on accountability recognizes that everyone may make mistakes or fall short of commitments. Becoming aware of our own errors or shortfalls and viewing them as opportunities for learning and growth enable us to be more successful in the future. Accountability therefore creates conditions for ongoing, constructive conversations in which our awareness of current reality is sharpened and in which we work to seek root causes, understand the system better, and identify new actions and agreements. The qualities of accountability are respect, trust, inquiry, moderation, curiosity, and mutuality.

Blaming, on the other hand, is more than just a process of allocating fault. It is often a process of shaming others and searching for something wrong with them. Blaming provides an early and artificial solution to a complex problem. It provides a simplistic view of a complex reality: I know what the problem is, and you’re it. Blame thus makes inquiry difficult and reduces the chances of getting to the real root of a problem. Blame also generates fear and destroys trust. When we blame, we often believe that other people have bad intentions or lack ability. We tend to excuse our own actions, however, because we know firsthand the challenges we face. The qualities of blame are judgment, anger, fear, punishment, and self-righteousness.

The Organizational Consequences of Blame

Blame Slows Information Flow and Reduces Innovation. People sometimes use blame as a strategy to get others to take ownership of problems. But this approach often backfires because people begin to equate acknowledging mistakes and surfacing bad news with punishment. When this happens, two reinforcing sets of behaviors may emerge: one by managers who are ostensibly seeking information and then punishing those who bring bad news, and the other by groups of employees who hide information and try either to protect each other or to blame each other. People who feel compelled to protect themselves can’t admit mistakes-and therefore can’t learn from them. Under these conditions, individuals spend time denying problems rather than solving them, and

The Reinforcing Cycles of Blame

Blame causes fear, which increases cover-ups and reduces the flow of information. The lack of information hinders problem solving, creating more errors (R1). Fear also stifles risk taking and discourages innovation (R2).

As shown in “The Reinforcing Cycles of Blame,” blaming leads to fear, which increases cover-ups and reduces the flow of information by stopping productive conversation. The lack of timely and accurate information about an organization’s current reality hinders problem solving, leading to more errors and more blame (R1).

Blaming and the fear it generates also discourage innovation and creative solutions. Frightened people don’t take risks, which are essential for innovation. Lack of innovation, in turn, leads to an inability to solve problems effectively and an increase in errors (R2).

Blame “Shifts the Burden.” In a “Shifting the Burden” situation, a problem has multiple solutions. People often grab onto the most obvious, short-term fix rather than search for the fundamental source of the problem. The lack of a permanent, long-term solution reinforces the need for additional quick fixes. Blame is a fix that actually diverts the blamers’ attention away from long-term interpersonal or structural solutions to problems (see B1 in “The Addiction to Blame” on p. 3).  Although blame provides some immediate relief and a sense of having solved a problem (“It’s their fault”), it also erodes communication (R3) and shifts the focus even further from accountability (B2), the more fundamental solution.

Blaming can also be addictive, because it makes us feel powerful and keeps us from having to examine our own role in a situation. For example, Jim, a brewery manager, got word that things were slowing down on line 10, a new canning line. He left his office and headed to the plant floor. “Grady, you’ve got to get this line going. Get with it,” he told his line foreman. Grady replied, “Jim, you know those guys on the last shift always screw things up.”

This is a familiar conversation to both men. Each walks away thinking something is wrong with the other. Jim thinks, “That Grady, I give him responsibility and he just can’t get it together.” Grady thinks, “Why is he always on my case? Can’t he see this is a tough issue? He’s so simplistic and short-sighted.”

In this scenario, Jim can walk away feeling relieved because he knows what the problem is-Grady is a lousy supervisor and may need to be replaced. Grady, on the other hand, can blame Jim for being a shortsighted, run-the-plant-by-the-numbers manager. Both get some initial relief from blaming each other, but neither solves the ongoing problem.

Moving from Blame to Accountability

How, then, do we move from blame to accountability? Even within carefully designed systems, people may fail at their work. And even with a knowledge of system dynamics, we still often look for an individual’s failure as a way to explain a problem. One leverage point is to understand the organizational dynamics of blame as described above. There is also leverage in changing how we think about and conduct ourselves at work.

There are three levels of specific behavioral change in moving from blame to accountability-the individual level, the interpersonal level, and the group or organizational level. First, individuals must be willing to change their own thinking and feelings about blame. Second, people need to become skillful at making contracts with one another and holding each other accountable for results. Third, groups need to promote responsible and constructive conversations by developing norms for direct conflict resolution between individuals. These behavioral changes-and the use of systems thinking to focus on the structures involved and not the personalities-can help create a constructive organizational culture.

Individual Level

Below is a list of ways to start breaking the mental models we hold about blame. When you find yourself beginning to blame someone else for a chronic problem, refer to this list and to the sidebar “Distinctions Between Blame and Accountability” (see p. 4).

1. Remember that others are acting rationally from their own perspective. Given what they know, the pressures they are under, and the organizational structures that are influencing them, they are doing the best they can. Give others the benefit of the doubt.

2. Realize that you probably have a role in the situation.Your behavior may be influencing this person’s behavior and may be producing some unintended effects. Keep in mind that you will tend to justify your own actions and point of view and discount the other person’s perspective.

3. Remind yourself that judgment and criticism make it very difficult to see clearly. Judgments are mental models that limit the ability to take in new data. They tend to increase the likelihood of anger and make it difficult to learn. The following questions may help stretch your thinking and ease angry feelings. Ask yourself:

• What information am I missing that would help me understand this person’s behavior?
• How might this behavior make sense?
• What pressures is he or she under?
• What systems or structures might be influencing this behavior?

4. Use a systems thinking perspective to explore the pressures on the players involved. Notice that there are some larger forces at work that are probably having an impact on both of you. For example, when organizational goals, strategies, and values aren’t clear, groups will sometimes work toward different objectives. A group that values customer service over cost will conflict with a group that is trying to lower expenditures. Identify some key variables and their interrelationships, and ask, Is this situation an example of a vicious cycle, “Shifting the Burden,” or “Accidental Adversaries”?

5. Be willing to be held accountable. This means that, when an issue comes up, you are willing to consider whether you have lived up to your end of an agreement or expectation. Ask yourself:

• Did I have a role in this situation?
• Did I take some actions that seemed right at the time, but that had unintended consequences?

6.Work constructively with your anger. Sustained anger may point to personal issues that have been triggered by the current situation. Broken agreements, mistakes, and blame all have difficult associations for most people. However, in a learning environment, constructive resolution of conflict can also lead to significant personal growth. The guiding questions here are:

• What am I learning about myself in this situation?
• What does this remind me of?
• What new behaviors or thoughts does this situation call for that may be a stretch for me?

Interpersonal Level

Initial Contracting. At the beginning of any working relationship, it’s vital to come to some basic agreements defining the nature and scope of the work, specific and yet-to-be-defined tasks, deadlines and related outcomes, processes or methods to be used, interim checkpoints and expectations at those checkpoints, standards, and roles.

It’s also helpful to discuss what to do in the event of a misunderstanding, a lapse in communication, or a failure to keep an agreement. Imagine possible breakdowns and design a process for handling them. If breakdowns do occur, be prepared to remind others of the plan you had prepared.

When lapses do take place, they need to be brought to the collective attention as soon as possible. Misunderstandings and broken agreements often promote anger, frustration, and blame. Allowing unaddressed misunderstandings to fester can hamper productive conversations. By contrast, raising issues early can minimize escalation of problems.

Accountability Conversations. Once any project or working relationship is under way, it’s useful to check in periodically on the state of the partnership through accountability conversations. You may or may not have clear recollections of the initial contract regarding the task, roles, standards, processes, and expected results. Either way, it’s productive to establish or reestablish these agreements and explore what is working or not working as you take action together to create envisioned results.

Accountability conversations aren’t always easy. However, the skills they require can be applied and developed over time. Some of the basic tools of learning organizations come into play here-the ladder of inference, for example, can be used to create a conversation of inquiry rather than inquisition. The accountability conversation is also the perfect setting for practicing left-hand column skills to surface assumptions blocking honest and productive discourse. In addition, admitting the tendency to

Distinctions between blame and accountability

Here are steps for initiating an accountability conversation:

1. Find out whether the person you are working with is interested in seeing problems as learning opportunities. If so, when a problem occurs, include other people who are also interested in the situation. Other people’s perspectives can be helpful because often two people in conflict are actually mirroring the conflict of a larger system within the organization.

2. Create a setting that is conducive to learning.

• Allow plenty of time to address the issues.
• Reaffirm with each other that the goal is to learn, not blame.
• Establish confidentiality.
• Be truly open-minded.
• Listen hard to the other person’s perspective

3. Have a conversation in which the two (or more) of you

• Clarify your intention for the meeting.
• Identify the data and any assumptions or conclusions you have drawn based on that data.
• Identify the pressures each of you is experiencing in the situation.
• Identify any stated or unstated expectations. If implicit agreements were not jointly understood, this is a good time to clarify and reestablish shared agreements.
• Analyze the problem from a systems perspective. Clarify how your mutual beliefs and actions might be related and are perhaps reinforcing each other.
• Identify some new ways to address the problem.

Group Level

How people talk about one another in an organization affects the levels of accountability and trust. Often, because people are reluctant to discuss accountability issues directly, they go to a third party to relieve their discomfort and get support for their point of view. The complaint does not get resolved this way, however, although the person with the complaint gains some relief. Bringing a complaint to a third party to clarify a situation can be a much more productive alternative.

To see how this works, let’s take a situation where Tony is angry with Lee because Lee wasn’t fully supportive in a meeting. Tony complains to Robin that Lee is unreliable. Robin sympathizes with Tony and agrees that Lee is unreliable. Tony and Robin now feel closer because they share this point of view. Lee does not yet know that Tony has a complaint. Later, though, Robin, busy with other projects, puts off one of Tony’s requests. Now Tony complains about Robin to Lee, and Robin doesn’t get the necessary feedback. Over time, all of these relationships will erode.

What is the alternative to this kind of dysfunctional blaming and resentment? The solution is a deep commitment on the part of all these people to work through their reluctance to give and receive difficult feedback. In addition, they need to learn how to hold one another accountable in an ongoing way. Now, when Tony is angry with Lee and goes to Robin, the purpose is to get coaching on how to raise the issue with Lee, not to get Robin’s agreement on what is wrong with Lee. In addition, Robin’s role is to make sure that Tony follows through on raising the concern directly with Lee.

To resolve conflict directly:

1.Bring your complaints about someone else to a third person to get coaching on how to raise your concerns.
Valuable questions from the coach include:

• Tell me about the situation.
• What results do you want?
• What’s another way of explaining the other person’s actions?
• How might the other person describe the situation?
• What was your role in creating the situation?
• What requests or complaints do you need to bring to the other person?
• How will you state them in order to get the results you want?
• What do you think your learning is in this situation?

2. Raise your concerns directly with the other person. Reaffirm your commitment to maintaining a good working relationship and find a way to express your fundamental respect for the person. The ladder of inference can be a helpful tool for focusing on the problem. Start by identifying the data that is the source of your concern. Then spell out the assumptions you made as you observed the data and any feelings you have about the situation. Finally, articulate your requests for change. During the conversation, remind the other person that reviewing the concern is part of learning to work together better

3. Let the coach know what happened.

4. Outside of this framework, refrain from making negative comments about people

5. For listeners who frequently hear complaints about a third party and want to create a learning setting, it can be helpful to say something like: “I’d like to help, but only if you want to create a constructive situation. We can explore these questions; otherwise, I prefer not to listen to your complaints.”

Organizational Accountability: The IS Story

Systems thinking provides useful tools for surfacing and breaking reinforcing cycles of blame within an organization. In the story below, a group was able to use causal loop diagrams to help them move beyond blame and craft a constructive, long-term solution.

The Information Systems group of a manufacturing plant was meeting to discuss their lack of progress on a large project to overhaul the department. Initially, the IS group decided that top management’s actions caused the group’s ineffectiveness. The plant management team (PMT) kept adding projects to the group’s already full plate. Members of the PMT responded to “squeaky wheels” by giving otherwise low-priority projects the force of their support. Also, the PMT didn’t reinforce plant wide policies the IS group had developed. Most important, the team didn’t give group members the support they needed to stick to the IS overhaul they had committed to, and wouldn’t give them the budget to hire the additional staff they sorely needed.

But when the group mapped out their current situation in a causal loop diagram, they gained a new perspective on the problem. They found that the situation resembled a “Success to the Successful” story, in which two or more projects or groups compete for limited resources.

The diagram “Success to the Squeaky Wheel” shows how, in this case, the IS group’s attention to urgent requests diverted resources away from prioritized items. Because rewards for completing urgent requests were heightened, the urgent tasks continued to receive greater attention (R2).  At the same time, the rewards for and focus on prioritized tasks decreased (R1). Finally, as people realized that urgent requests received greater attention than prioritized items, the number of “squeaky wheels”-or people promoting their own agenda items to management-proliferated. This development was followed by an increase in management’s efforts to get action on those agenda items, which further promoted urgent items over prioritized ones (R3).

After examining the causal loop diagrams, the group realized that they had played a role in the stalled progress on the overhaul project. Although IS team members encouraged each other to blame the PMT, no one in the group had given the PMT feedback concerning the impact of their requests and lack of support.

Armed with a systems view, the group identified several actions they could take to shift these unproductive dynamics. They decided to tell the PMT that they recognized that the IS overhaul was a top priority for the plant as a whole. They would point out that they couldn’t make progress on the overhaul if they continued to respond to “squeaky wheels. “The group would also let the PMT know that when they received additional requests, they would ask:

• How much of a priority is this request for you?
• Are you aware that there is a tradeoff in priorities?

The group concluded that they would issue a memo to the PMT describing their priorities and soliciting the PMT’s support of those priorities. They would also request that the PMT clearly communicate the priorities to the rest of the plant. In the memo, they would indicate the tradeoffs they were making and identify how their choices would help the company as a whole. The group felt that, with the PMT’s support, they would have the authority to focus on the prioritized project instead of responding to urgent requests.

Conclusion

Developing accountability skills is challenging; it takes courage and the willingness to learn new ways of thinking and acting. So why is moving from blame to accountability worthwhile? Because blame is like sugar – it produces a brief boost and then a let-down. It doesn’t serve the system’s long-term needs and can actually prevent it from functioning effectively. On the other hand, developing accountability skills and habits on every level of your organization can be an important element in maintaining your organization’s long-term health.

Marilyn Paul, PhD, is an independent organizational consultant affiliated with Innovation Associates, an Arthur D. Little company. She has sixteen years of experience facilitating organizational change. One focus of her work is peer mentoring and capacity development.

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Why has accountability, which is merely a principle of sound managerial practice, gotten such a bad rap? Senior managers have too often invoked it as a way of getting things done that they themselves don’t know how do in our less-than-perfect organizational systems and structures. Sometimes this dubious ploy actually works. After all, when their boss says, “Just get it done!” many people can — through sheer willpower, brute force, and long hours — overcome managerial abdication, systemic dysfunctionality, and structural flaws. But the wear and tear burns people out and suboptimizes the whole.

As a managerial technique, holding people accountable after casually tossing a goal or task to them — without setting the context, securing the necessary resources, and providing the proper structure — is destructive. It generates negative emotions and behaviors and a widespread negative response to the proper and requisite notion of accountability. Nevertheless, accountability leadership is crucial for managers to move forward to more productive ways of doing business.

Rehabilitating Accountability

As a first step in rehabilitating accountability, I give you the following accurate, useful definition of the concept: “Accountability is the obligation of an employee to deliver all elements of the value that he or she is being compensated for delivering, as well as the obligation to deliver on specific output commitments with no surprises.”

The essence of employee accountability becomes clear by comparing the role of an employee with that of an independent contractor. A contractor is accountable for delivering a measurable, usually quantifiable, product, service, or result. Repair the roof. Install a phone system. Collect past due accounts. In the process, the contractor has the absolute right to be paid as long as you receive the value you requested. He is left on his own to create his own processes to secure resources, generate efficiencies, and produce results.

Employees, on the other hand, are accountable for delivering value consistent with the total requirements of their role while coordinating with other company processes and functions. In turn, they have the right to be compensated at a level consistent with the value they contribute. Employees are (by law!) paid every day, come what may. They also typically receive training, development, and benefits. But in order to follow through with their commitments, they need the appropriate resources, support, and guidance about expectations about their performance.

Fixed vs. Relative Accountabilities

Thus, in an organization, the term “accountability” refers to an employee’s obligations, some of which are fixed and some of which are relative. Fixed accountabilities comprise the employee’s obligations to deliver outputs and to use resources and processes precisely as specified by the employer. They are necessary to keep processes in control and can be summarized in two distinct categories:

• Commitment. Employees must fulfill the output commitments exactly, in terms of quantity, quality, and timeparameters, as defined in their assignments, projects, services, and other deliverables — unless the manager agrees to adjust them. Under no circumstances can the employee surprise her manager at the due date with changes.
• Adherence. Employees must simultaneously observe and work within defined resource constraints — that is, the rules and limits established by policies, procedures, contracts, and other managerial guidelines, as well as by law.

Relative accountabilities have to do with the employee’s exercise of judgment to maximize value; they include the following four categories:

• Reach. Employees are expected to add as much value as they can by signing on for ambitious yet achievable targets, rather than hanging back or committing to “low-ball” goals.
• Fit for purpose. Employees must continually strive to ensure the optimal means of producing appropriate outputs that support the purpose for which the outputs were designed in the first place.
• Stewardship. Employees must manage company funds and other resources efficiently and seek ways to continually improve and conserve those resources, wherever possible
• Teamwork. Employees must recognize that it is the concerted effort from and between everyone that generates profit in any organization, rather than isolated efforts to maximize personal output. Therefore, an employee must accommodate other people’s work across the organization to maximize the total organizational value — even if her job becomes more difficult in the process.

Many managers do a poor job of defining, explaining, and gaining commitment to fixed accountabilities with their subordinates and holding them to those commitments (see “Management Terminology”). Even more fail to properly explain relative accountabilities and to accurately assess their subordinates’ effectiveness in delivering on them. For that reason, some managers over-budget expenses so they’ll look good next year; some salespeople sell customers more than they need, just so they’ll reach their sales quota this year; some operating personnel pay too much for materials because it’s easier than shopping around — all are failing to fulfill their relative accountabilities. Clearly articulated relative accountabilities are the antidote to the pursuit of narrow goals, waste of resources, and lack of team play that renders so many employees, and their companies, ineffective.

QQT/R

Managers’ accountabilities include some that are unique to the managerial role. Chief among them is being clear with their subordinates about what (the quantity and quality of output) they are expected to deliver and how much time they have to deliver it. Managers are also accountable for providing the resources employees need to complete their assignments.

In virtually any environment, when I ask employees how clear their managers are about what they are accountable for getting done, most will say, “Not very.” In manufacturing, for instance, a supervisor may specify an increase in quantity but not the acceptable reduction, if any, in quality. Yet statistical process control and just-in-time working require unambiguous clarity about accountabilities and the interaction between quantity, quality, time, and resources.

Many managers assume their subordinates know what they are accountable for, not realizing the tension and anxiety they inadvertently cause by failing to be clear. Typically, a highly responsible subordinate will make her best guess at reading her boss’s mind, hoping to be in the right ballpark. Then, a few months later when she gives him a progress report and he says, “That’s not at all what I wanted,” she ends up feeling frustrated and distrustful.

Management scientist Elliott Jaques has developed a small but powerful tool that can be useful for clarifying fixed accountabilities: QQT/R. The slash in QQT/R does not indicate arithmetic division; it merely separates employees’ output accountabilities (quantity, quality, and time frame) from their resource constraints (see “QQT/R”). This expression is the simplest way for managers to accurately define assignments that they are delegating to their subordinates.

QQT/R creates unequivocal clarity regarding obligations. The formula puts all four variables on the table so managers and subordinates can examine, discuss, adjust, and commit to each one explicitly. The variables are both independent and interdependent, summing up real-world constraints and possibilities and exposing potential tradeoffs among them.

With the tradeoffs out in the open, managers and their subordinates are positioned for a hard-hitting, objective conversation about the manager’s goals and resources and the employee’s ability to meet those goals given current conditions. When this process is ignored or done haphazardly, employees are saddled with their managers’ unrealistic or unfair expectations, and managers delude themselves with their employees’ acquiescent or deceptive commitments to fulfill those expectations. When managers extract so-called stretch commitments from employees that are obviously unobtainable, or when they fail to provide adequate resources for an effort, employees know what’s happening and feel they’ve been taken. Similarly, when employees won’t commit to challenging goals, they are sabotaging their managers and their company.

Some managers fear that tools such as QQT/R inhibit initiative and creativity. But QQT/R does just the opposite, because it inspires employees to figure out how best to deliver on their commitments — not to decide what they are to deliver. The best employees delight in improving processes and conserving resources while hitting their QQT objectives. QQT/R should not be construed as top-down either. It should be the outcome of active, vigorous, two-way discussion between managers and their subordinates.

Other managers initially believe that QQT/R cannot be applied to people in analytical or research positions or other areas of knowledge work. Our clients involved in research, product, technology, and market development, as well as similar functions, don’t use QQT/R just to define results per se. They also use it to mutually define the processes, steps, and resources that must be developed in order to yield the intended results (see “A Technology QQT/R” on page 4).

QQT/R is not meant to be a straightjacket or a rigid set of rules. Rather, it is a useful tool for managers and employees to use in developing clearly articulated, mutually agreed upon commitments. It is the most efficient means of ensuring that the output delivered to managers is really the output they wanted. Significantly, QQT/R captures some of the managers’ accountabilities as well as those of employees by defining the resources the manager commits to deliver.

Yet being clear about the QQT/R does not capture all managerial accountabilities. In addition, managers must provide their subordinates the support and working conditions they need to deliver on their accountabilities. This support may include coaching subordinates to enhance their effectiveness and providing constructive feedback. The bottom line is that a manager is accountable for her subordinates’ outputs. She cannot blame her inability to deliver her commitments on her subordinates’ failure to meet their targets. You might say the manager’s credo for the 21st century must be: No excuses about your subordinates’ QQT/Rs! No surprises about your own!

Accountability and Authority

Managers must also be accountable for giving subordinates the authority they need in order to deliver on their obligations. Holding employees accountable for achieving a goal that they haven’t been given the authority to achieve is what I call “managing for fantasy.” Invariably, doing so generates stress, frustration, and resentment in employees. Even when the result is obtained, it is usually at the cost of suboptimizing overall organizational results (see “Managing for Fantasy”).

The reverse of this problem authority without accountability — is also prevalent. For example, an employee may be given authority over processes, people, or other resources but not held accountable for how well he or she manages or what results are achieved. When that happens, the employee eventually becomes self-absorbed and develops a sense of entitlement. In this fantasy culture of undisciplined performance and variable teamwork, one’s attitude is always “me first, productivity second.”

Accountability vs. Responsibility

Another common mistake is confusing accountability with responsibility. In the purest sense, responsibility is what an individual demands of himself or herself. It has to do with one’s conscience, aspirations, and internal standards. Accountability has to do with specific obligations one has to another individual based on mutual commitments each has made to the other. Unfortunately, most organizations use these words interchangeably as a way to make people feel accountable when they don’t actually have the necessary authority.

When employees are unclear about or lack the authority they need to deliver on their accountabilities, they fall back on their own sense of personal responsibility. Because most companies have highly responsible employees, those employees take it upon themselves to get the job done, usually at considerable cost to themselves and their coworkers. As a consequence, they always end up suboptimizing overall organizational effectiveness.

For example, a client of ours in the metal fabricating business asked me to talk with their newly promoted assistant superintendent Sam Travers, a 12-year veteran. Since the promotion, Sam had grown irritable and disruptive. His leadership style included yelling, threatening, cursing, and even kicking cans around. After talking with Sam, I found him to be courteous, reasonable, intelligent, and mature. If anything, he was fully aware of his so-called accountabilities — and chief among them was keeping his area’s machines operating at 80 percent of capacity, or more. However, the machine operators were subordinate to their shift supervisors, not to Sam, and they feared their supervisors would dock their pay, write them up, suspend them, or fire them if a machine broke from being cranked too high. The supervisors, busy fighting fires elsewhere, told Sam to handle the problem himself. Only by screaming at the operators could Sam get them to work faster. He had no managerial authority over the operators yet he felt responsible for getting those machines running at 80 percent or better.

An employee who is working hard but not getting the intended results, or who is achieving results only at considerable cost to coworkers, subordinates, or the larger organization, is probably acting responsibly. With such individuals, you must first review their accountabilities and set them in the context of overall company goals. The next crucial step is to ascertain whether the person has both the commensurate authority and the resources to get the job done. Gaps in the accountability-authority equation may be resolved simply or may require rethinking the alignments in your structures and processes.

LEAD People to Accountability

So what is the solution to this accountability crisis? How can we build accountability leadership in our organizations? The four cornerstones of accountability leadership are “LEAD” — leverage, engagement, alignment, and development. LEAD represents a systemic way of thinking and acting that greatly increases a manager’s effectiveness. It starts with the concept that managers exist to leverage people’s potential so that they can achieve more than they could alone. To get this leverage, managers must engage their employees’ enthusiastic commitment and ensure that they are in alignment with the organization and one another. To maintain leverage over the long term, managers must develop their people’s capabilities so they can apply their full potential to the work of the organization.

Let’s look more closely at each element of the system:

Leverage. In an accountability framework, managers are hired to leverage the creative capabilities of their people to make the total result of their contributions greater than the sum of the parts. A lever is a simple tool that enables someone to lift a heavy object higher than he could on his own. Similarly, leadership, when properly practiced using the levers of engagement, alignment, and development, enables people in a company, department, or team to accomplish something that would not otherwise be possible.

To help employees exercise judgment, the most important leadership practice a manager can deploy is setting context.

The key for managers to become effective leaders is to understand what they are leveraging. They’re not leveraging employees’ fixed accountabilities — the defined assignments and the rules of engagement surrounding the assignment — but rather their relative accountabilities — the value added by their application of judgment and discretion. In other words, managers must fully leverage the collective mental force of their people in order to elevate the whole organization’s ability to deliver value to the customer and, ultimately, to the shareholder.

To help their employees exercise their judgment, the most important leadership practice a manager can deploy is setting context. Doing so consists of including your subordinate in your own thinking and in your manager’s thinking, and then incorporating your subordinate’s thinking into your own. This approach improves upon the quality of a manager’s plan and it helps a subordinate to think, plan, and make adjustments intelligently — that is, in a way that best supports the bigger picture.

Engagement. Effective managers engage commitment by understanding what goes into a healthy “psychological contract,” a term coined by Harry Levinson in the 1950s to describe how managers understand and create the conditions necessary for people to feel supported and successful. This contract represents an implicit — often unspoken — understanding and agreement on what the company will provide, and what the employee will provide, to make the relationship work. It is not to be confused with an employment contract, a legal device detailing what employers and employees owe each other. Rather, the psychological contract rests upon a foundation of mutual commitment to each other’s success.

Negotiating strong, mutual, and reciprocal contracts requires that managers attend to what their employees value, how they define success, and what demonstrates to them that the organization supports their pursuit of success. As a general rule, employees perceive their companies as being committed to their success when they provide:

• A safe, healthy work environment
• Respectful, trustworthy relationships
• Regular opportunities for providing input to the organization, its goals, and one’s own assignments
• Valuable, personally meaningful, and challenging work
• The resources and authorities necessary to meet accountabilities
• Assistance in reaching one’s full potential within the organization
• Recognition and appreciation of one’s contribution
• Fair compensation
• A commitment to organizational success and perpetuation

If an employee — or your entire workforce — fails to demonstrate the level of engagement sought, use the preceding list as a diagnostic checklist. Invariably, at least one and usually more of these elements will be missing. This shortcoming is your clue to remedial actions that you might take.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that context setting and QQT/Rs are part of the psychological contract. Employees prefer clarity, not vagueness. The very process of jointly defining intentions and ambitious and attainable QQT/Rs creates engagement.

Alignment. Employees are aligned when they understand the relationship between their activities and goals and those of their organization, managers, and coworkers — and then act on that understanding. Alignment enables employees to best use their judgment to craft, with others, the day-to-day, often minute-to-minute adjustments that will best support management’s thinking in light of changing conditions.

Alignment ensures that employees are not only accountable for accomplishing their own individual missions — the QQT/Rs — but that they deliver their accountabilities in such a way that ensures they fit into, and support, the whole. With that framework, employees can be expected to chart and continually adjust a course to reach optimal solutions — together. So by setting context, a manager brightens the light on the areas where employees should focus and dims it on areas where they do not need to do so.

To be most useful, context must be translated into a fully articulated decision-making framework within which subordinates can make optimal trade-offs. This framework guides subordinates when they must make decisions involving key dimensions such as revenue, costs, profits, quality, quantity, timeliness, customer satisfaction, or an objective such as winning a new market. Within such a framework, employees not only understand the context in terms of their manager’s thinking and intentions, but they also understand the umbrella of alternative logic within which they must operate.

Development. Employee development, as a continual, career long process, represents the surest path to a workforce that functions with enthusiastic commitment at its full potential. If there truly is a talent gap and companies cannot find and retain enough high performers, then senior executives need to start taking employee development seriously. This means understanding what development entails, creating a talent-pool development system, and holding each manager accountable for effectively developing her own employees — both in role and in careers.

To fully develop an employee’s potential, you need to have a good idea of what that potential is. The purest handle you can get on an employee’s potential involves assessing his ability to handle complexity. This point is quite important, because position levels in organizations are closely related to the complexity of the tasks and the kind of judgment involved in the work of those positions.

Broadly, the tasks of employee development fall into two areas: developing subordinates in their current positions (through coaching) and developing subordinates to improve their fit for higher-level positions in the future (through mentoring). In other words, managers must be accountable for coaching their immediate subordinates and for mentoring their subordinates’ subordinates.

What It Takes to LEAD

The system that I have labeled LEAD lacks the iron-fist approach of the old command-and-control style of management, as well as its paternalism and its limited view of employee potential. LEAD also eschews the passive approach associated with employee empowerment, self-directed work groups, and similar laissez-faire reactions to command and control.

Instead, LEAD begins with a clear mandate for managers to leverage their people to their highest levels of achievement, as individuals and as a group. LEAD recognizes that managers will draw forth employees’ best efforts not by the unilateral issuing of orders, but by enthusiastically engaging their employees’ commitment in their work. Furthermore, LEAD aligns those efforts when managers construct with their subordinates a powerful context — conveying management’s thinking and intentions — as well as practical decision-making frameworks. And finally, LEAD looks to the long-term value of the individual and the organization by holding managers accountable for effectively developing their employees to their fullest potential.

To implement LEAD, you need a clear view of your managerial role, the flexibility to adopt new viewpoints, and the patience and intelligence to learn new skills. You also need the energy and commitment to work with yourself and your people, to try and fail and try again until the system becomes part of your everyday managerial-leadership practice. In addition, you need the courage to establish LEAD as an accountability for every manager and to assess each manager’s value — and right to remain a manager — against this standard. Implementing accountability leadership does require hard work, but I fervently believe that business leaders and managers who undertake it can use LEAD to their competitive advantage.

The post Accountability Leadership appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Our first reaction is to blame others for these problems, be they greedy Wall Street bankers, rapacious corporations, or dishonest politicians of either the conservative or liberal persuasion.

But here’s some news for you. Playing the blame game is merely an ingenious avoidance technique. It allows us to place the focus outside of ourselves and steer clear of having to look at our own contribution to today’s troubling situations. Don’t get me wrong. I know some people and organizations do bad things. But we often project onto others the very things we need to examine in ourselves.

The economic, social, and environmental ills we face today are of our own making. They are the outcomes of how we see and respond to the world. Unethical corporations and disreputable politicians might seem to cause the most egregious harm, but they are merely taking today’s dominant cultural perspectives to the extreme. The challenges our society faces today illuminate the changes we each need to make in ourselves.

To resolve a problem, you first need to understand its cause. The roots of our troubles are simple, yet for most of us completely hidden from view. We have been living in a dream world, controlled by false perceptions and beliefs. Our personal lives, as well as the activities of the organizations with which we are involved and society at large, have been guided by fundamental misjudgments about how our planet functions and what it means to live a good and decent life.

The most harmful illusion is that each of us exists on Earth as an independent, separate entity. This belief, now dominant in Western culture, has produced an extreme form of individualism. Most of us today believe in the “sacredness” of the individual. Anything that threatens our ability to do whatever we want, whenever we want, is seen as a danger to our economy, personal freedom, and way of life.

The belief in separation leads us to accept the notion that self-interest is the dominant driver of human behavior. This is false. A selfless concern for the welfare of others is also encoded in our genes. It is a powerful form of feedback that keeps the self-interested aspects of our personalities in check. By emphasizing only our selfish traits and denying our selfless qualities, we have denied our capacity for self-restraint and promoted behaviors that undermine the health of the planet and put billions of people in peril, including you and me.

The economic, social, and environmental ills we face today are of our own making.

Our belief in separation and the extreme individualism it has spawned is a fantasy – with startling consequences. It prevents us from seeing that we humans exist only due to the complex web of interlocking ecological and social systems that exist on Earth. Because we have failed to restrain our activities to conserve those systems, the Earth’s surface temperatures are on a trajectory to rise by around 2°C, and possibly much more this century. If this occurs, the consequences will be disastrous. Temperatures might climb gradually, in fits and starts, for a while. But then sudden shocking changes that no computer model could ever predict are likely to occur. Rapid and chaotic climatic shifts will trigger destructive heat waves or long-term drought, followed by food shortages, resources wars, and maybe the destruction of a major city or two by rising sea levels or horrific storms. Without a swift, dramatic change in direction, the coming decades will be a wild and turbulent ride.

To navigate the troubled waters that lie ahead and eventually emerge in a healthier condition, we must overcome the erroneous perspectives that have led to this predicament. At the most fundamental level, this involves a shift from responding to the world exclusively through the perspective of extreme individualism – the lens of “Me,” which includes our personal, family, and organizational goals and desires – to meeting our needs by renewing and caring for an expansive “We” – the many people, organisms, and interconnections we are part of that make life possible and worthwhile.

As opposed to “first-order change,” which slightly improves the efficiency of a system without fundamentally changing its goals, structures, or ultimate outcomes – which is what most so-called sustainability initiatives focus on – the shift from “Me” to “We” constitutes a “second-order change,” which establishes altogether new and truly sustainable objectives, designs, and results. As we make this transformational shift, our personal awareness will increase and the fear and emptiness that pervade us will diminish. We can once again find promise, meaning, and inspiration in our lives.

Five powerful commitments can help you make the conversion from focusing exclusively on “Me” to consistently accounting for the many people, organisms, and interdependencies involved with an emphasis on “We.” None of the commitments is actually new. On the contrary, throughout human history, sages have proclaimed them to be universal truths. They are often discussed today in a disjointed way, and at times you might practice one or more of them.

Although not particularly complicated, these five commitments are profoundly important because they are based on “natural laws” of sustainability. These are universal truths about how humans must interact with the Earth’s ecological systems and with each other if we are to successfully transition through the rocky times ahead and emerge in a better condition.

Each of the commitments can be applied immediately. You don’t need to wait for other people or institutions to change. You and your organization only need to change your own thinking and behavior.

Each time you put the commitments into practice, the myths that have such a powerful hold on you will be weakened. You and the groups you engage with will then be better equipped to do your part to resolve the systemic breakdowns that threaten us all.

As you make the shift from “Me” to “We” that is at the heart of sustainable thinking and action, an extraordinary inner journey will begin that will radically change your life. Your optimism about the future and your self-confidence will grow. Hope and inspiration will be your hallmarks. You will become a beacon of light for others to follow.

The First Commitment: See the Systems You Are Part Of

How do you see the world? Does your image include all of the things that actually exist on the planet, or is your vision narrowly focused on your personal, family, or organizational needs and wants?

Most of us are not so self-centered as to say that we completely ignore the natural environment or other people. Nor will most people or organizations say they are always selfless and think only of others. But if your focus is mostly limited to your personal or organizational desires, then time and again you will think about little else and fail to see how your activities affect other people, the natural environment, or even yourself.

The difference between an expansive view of the world and a restricted perspective can be understood by looking up for a moment and taking several deep breaths. Feel the air as it fills your lungs. Can you explain what just happened?

Oxygen entered your body and sustained your life. Oxygen supports a process called cell respiration that turns food into energy. Oxygen also detoxifies your blood, strengthens your immune system, and rebuilds your body. Do you know how this oxygen came to be? About three-quarters of it was produced during photosynthesis in single-celled green algae and bacteria in marine environments. The remainder came from the same process in forests and other vegetation. Complex interactions occurring all around you created the oxygen that makes your life possible.

How conscious are you of these elaborate relationships? If you fail to consider the intricate web of interactions unfolding all around the planet, you will often act in ways that impair those life-giving forces. You will also create significant distress for other people – and, ultimately, for yourself.

We humans live in systems. You are a complex system yourself. Think of your heart, lungs, and the many other organs that work together seamlessly to keep your body running. You are also a member of numerous social systems, such as your family, place of work, community, professional societies, and fellow humans around the globe. Additionally, as the oxygen you just inhaled demonstrates, you are a part of the larger complex living system that is planet Earth.

The reality is that everything on the planet is created and sustained by something else. There is nothing that actually exists by itself. This is the Law of Interdependence. It is the most fundamental of all the natural laws of sustainability. It says that each of us exists in this world only as part of a complex web of interlocking systems. There is no truly separate “Me.” Each person is created and sustained by interconnected networks of ecological and social systems – a collective “We.”

Understanding the context in which you exist is essential for progress toward true sustainability. The first and most important commitment you and the organizations you are involved with must make to realize the shift from “Me” to “We” is to see the systems you are part of.

What you see in the world is in large part shaped by your assumptions and beliefs. Your thinking, in turn, influences how you interact with everything around you. If you, and the organizations you participate in, desire to begin the journey from “Me” to “We” and thrive in the difficult times ahead, you must abandon your fictional belief in separateness and make a commitment to see the integrated nature of the systems you are embedded within. You must become aware of the context in which you exist.

Systems can be difficult to quantify. But you can map them. Drawing maps of the social, economic, and ecological systems you are part of can be a fun and helpful way to expand your awareness of systems.

Seeing the systems you are part of is only a first step in the transition from “Me” to “We.” You must now look deeper and understand how to think about the consequences of your outdated thinking and behavior on those systems.

The Second Commitment: Be Accountable for All the Consequences of Your Actions

“We reap what we sow.” This timeless proverb means we determine our future by what we do in the present. There is no way to avoid this natural law. We cannot plant seeds of one kind and expect to reap fruits of a different type. Wise people throughout the ages have told us that this is so.

Science has described this principle as well. Newton’s Third Law of Motion says that, “For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.” If we toss a stone into the air, it will fall to Earth every time. When we push over the first of a row of dominoes, it will fall on the next, which will tumble onto the next and, eventually, cause the entire chain to collapse. Our planet is composed of interlocking webs of systems, so almost everything we do today has a consequence of some type, somewhere, at some point in time. This is the Law of Cause and Effect.

The natural Law of Cause and Effect is closely connected to the Law of Interdependence. In fact, it is the flip side of that first law of sustainability because it describes the consequences that naturally occur when we fail to see and care for the Earth’s social and ecological systems.

Most people know that cause and effect exists. Yet those of us who grew up in Western nations were raised in societies that promote the notion of separation and extreme individualism. Personally and organizationally, we tend to focus almost exclusively on our own needs and wants – on “Me” – and deny, discount, or ignore the many ways in which our actions might affect the many systems we are part of – the broader “We” that makes life possible and worthwhile.

The second commitment you and the organizations you are involved with must make to realize the shift from “Me” to “We” is to be accountable for all of the consequences of your actions.

As with systems, cause and effect relationships can be difficult to quantify. But they can be mapped. Tools such as “Fishbone” diagrams can help you understand the possible consequences of your actions.

Awareness is everything. The more mindful you become of the potential effects of your actions, the greater your awareness will become. Like the other commitments involved with the shift from “Me” to “We,” as other people and organizations make a similar commitment, our society will increase its understanding of the implications of our past and current practices, and take another step toward true sustainability.

The Third Commitment: Abide by Society’s Most Deeply Held Universal Principles of Morality and Justice

Imagine, for a moment, that a genie suddenly whisks you away from your everyday life and makes you the world’s most powerful decision maker. At your fingertips is the most up-to-date information about the planet’s economic, social, and environmental conditions. You can use that data to make any type of decision you want about how resources and wealth should be allocated and how things should function.

But, there is a catch. The genie has also given you amnesia. You cannot remember your social status, nationality, gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, how much money you have, or even who your parents or family are. Consequently, you don’t know what the effects of your decisions will be on you or your loved ones because you don’t know who you are or where you live. (This exercise is a slight variation of the “veil of ignorance” described by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice, Belknap Press, 1971.)

Under these conditions, would you make decisions? Would you use as much energy, consume as many resources, or generate as much solid waste and greenhouse gas emissions as you do today? Would you seek to accumulate as much personal wealth or power?

Not likely. Instead, you would undoubtedly adopt a decision-making process similar to the universal moral principle known as the “Golden Rule” that says: “Treat others as you would like them to treat you.” In other words, you would no longer focus only on your own wants and needs but instead consciously choose to see things through the eyes of people all over the world because those “others” might include you! You would shift your perspective from “Me” to “We.”

As far-fetched as this scenario seems, it describes the reality of the world we live in today. Although you might never have omnipotent power, no matter who you are or where you live, you can be negatively affected by the actions of anyone on the planet at any time. Similarly, your activities, and those of the organizations you are a member of, can affect people around the globe as well as all future generations in surprising ways. To ensure your own well-being, you must therefore make decisions that enhance the well-being of everyone else.

Committing to seeing the social and ecological systems you are part of, and accounting for all of the ways your activities are likely to affect those systems, are necessary conditions for the shift from “Me” to “We.” But this is only a start. You must now decide on the moral principles that will guide your response to those consequences. What moral standards will you hold yourself to as you respond to the breakdown of the climate and biosphere and the social and economic distress they trigger? What principles of morality and justice will your organization base its activities on?

The natural laws of sustainability and associated commitments are the fundamentals of the shift from “Me” to “We” embodied in sustainable thinking and action.

In today’s over-crowded, over-consumed, over-polluted, and over-heating world, morally just behavior is more essential than ever before. That’s because moral action is not based on philosophy or good intentions. It is based on real-world consequences. This is the Law of Moral Justice. This natural law of sustainability says that morally just behavior is imperative now because at this moment in history, our survival requires exemplary levels of human self-control, cooperation, and principled action. Without it, everyone will suffer, including you and me.

Although instinctual drives and the capacity to reason shape human behavior, the moral precepts we hold ourselves to determine how those processes play out. The third commitment you and the organizations you are involved with must make to realize the shift from “Me” to “We” is to abide by society’s most deeply held universal principles of morality and justice. The most widely held moral precept is to always strive to “do no harm” to the social and ecological systems we are part of.

If you commit to practicing moral justice by striving to do no harm, you can make the tough choices required to help society transition to true sustainability.

The Fourth Commitment: Acknowledge Your Trustee Obligations and Take Responsibility for the Continuation of All Life

In 1972, the Apollo 17 astronauts took the first and most complete picture humanity had ever seen of our planet – our home – as a whole. Referred to as “the Blue Marble,” the picture shows that there are no discharge pipes allowing us to dump our toxic substances, solid waste, and greenhouse gases into space. Everything we humans make – toxic and otherwise – accumulates somewhere in the land, waters, or atmosphere of our planet. There are no intake pipelines that allow us to import additional resources from other planets. When we deplete non-renewable resources, they will vanish forever. When we push the Earth’s climate and ecological systems beyond their limits, they are likely to flip into permanently degraded and, from a human perspective, unwanted conditions.

The cumulative effects of human activities on the Earth – especially those of the past 50–100 years – have led a number of scientists to proclaim that we have entered a new geological era called the “Anthropocene.” This term refers to the fact that, for the first time, humankind’s influence on the environment is so overwhelming that our activities, rather than natural processes, will now determine the fate of the Earth.

It is a universal moral principle that the more power one has over another, the greater is the duty to use that power benevolently. If human behaviors now determine the fate of the planet, individually and collectively, we have a responsibility to do what is necessary to sustain it. This is the Law of Trusteeship. This natural law of sustainability says that no one living today actually owns anything. We are merely trustees with a responsibility to administer the planet’s assets to ensure that they are sustained in a healthy condition into perpetuity.

Acknowledging that we are now trustees of all there is in the world is a difficult task for most people and most organizations. Our belief in extreme individualism, derived from the mistaken idea that we exist independently from all other organisms and processes on Earth, leads us to think that we have no responsibilities for anything beyond our organizations, our families, and ourselves. This belief is erroneous. The fourth commitment you and the organizations you are involved with must make to realize the shift from “Me” to “We” is to acknowledge your trustee obligations and take responsibility for the continuation of all life.

The commitment to acknowledge our trustee obligations and take responsibility for the continuation of all life emphasizes our selfless, cooperative, and caring instincts. It thus operationalizes the second of humanity’s most deeply held universal moral principles, which is to “do good.” The Golden Rule succinctly describes this commitment: “Treat others as you would like them to treat you.”

The Fifth Commitment: Choose Your Own Destiny

The natural laws of sustainability and associated commitments are the fundamentals of the shift from “Me” to “We” embodied in sustainable thinking and action. In summary, these laws state that our survival and the survival of all other life forms on Earth is possible only because we are enmeshed within a complex web of interdependent climatic, ecological, and social systems. Given the deteriorating conditions of the planet today, almost every action we take affects those systems somewhere, at some point in time. Our response to these consequences will be shaped by the moral principles we adopt to guide our thinking, behavior, and policies. Because human actions now determine the fate of the Earth, like it or not, each of us is a trustee with the responsibility to care for all life on Earth.

But there is one additional natural law that you must follow to make a successful shift from “Me” to “We.” This law is the key to your ability to abide by all of the others. It is the Law of Free Will. This law states that even though your perceptions and behaviors are strongly influenced by your upbringing, today’s dominant cultural worldview, and the physical, political, and economic infrastructure they produced, you have the capacity to change your thinking and practices at any time.

Humans are capable of self-awareness and independent thought. You have a natural ability to reveal, examine, and alter the core assumptions and beliefs that shape your life. This means that at any time, you can choose to abandon views that do not serve you well, keep those that do, and adopt new ways of seeing and responding to the world that produce substantially better outcomes. The fifth and final commitment you and the organizations you are involved with must make to realize the shift from “Me” to “We” is to choose your own destiny.

If you choose to make the shift from “Me” to “We,” you can start by acknowledging the natural laws of sustainability and decide to abide by the commitments here. Likewise, the organizations you are involved with can choose to create a culture of accountability for sustainability organized around the five commitments (see “The Five Commitments”).

All social change happens one person at a time. This means there is only one way to alter the trajectory of the troubling conditions the world faces today, and that is for you to make the shift from “Me” to “We.” You must see for yourself the truths inherent in the natural laws of sustainability and the power of the five commitments. As more people see the world in new ways, social contagion will occur. If you focus on the broader “We” that makes all life possible, and think and act sustainably, great peace and happiness will be yours. You will also become a role model that others will follow.

Bob Doppelt is executive director of The Resource Innovation Group (TRIG), a non-partisan social science-based sustainability and global climate change education, research, and technical assistance organization affiliated with the Center for Sustainable Communities at Willamette University, where he is also a senior fellow. In addition, Bob is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Planning, Public Policy, and Management at the University of Oregon. He is the author of Me to We: Five Commitments That Can Save The Planet and Change Your Life (Greenleaf Publishing, 2012).

The post From Me to We: The Five Transformational Commitments Required to Rescue the Planet, Your Organization, and Your Life appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Since his appointment in November 2001, Spence has been thinking deeply about the paradoxical nature of the child welfare system. Chosen for his long and impressive record of advocating for children and families, providing fiscal stewardship, and understanding complex systems, he says that one of the first things he initiated for himself was “an analysis of the coherence among the organization’s values, structure, process, praxis, and content.” In the course of his analysis, Spence came upon studies that showed that the gap in child welfare agencies between espoused theory and theory in practice is as great as any recorded in organizations that have been studied.

He attributes this gap in part to the enormous stress the child welfare system is under at any given time— particularly the stress that frontline workers face by constantly having to make life and death decisions with little real support from their own organizational culture or the culture at large. People don’t automatically consider child welfare in the same category of heroic public service as police and fire departments. And, unlike those institutions, when something goes wrong, such as when a child dies, the public immediately blames DSS.

Aligned Values

People don’t automatically consider child welfare in the same category of heroic public service as police and fire departments. And, unlike those institutions, when something goes wrong, such as when a child dies, the public immediately blames DSS.

One of the first steps Spence and his staff took to close the gap was to draft six clear, aligned statements that help people understand and agree on what constitutes good work. They have called these statements “practice values” for the agency’s work: it is child-driven, family-centered, strength-based, community-focused, committed to diversity and cultural competence, and committed to continuous learning. “These values are not radical in the child welfare world,” says Harry. “What would be radical is actually figuring out how to achieve them, which is what we’re trying to do.”

After they drafted the value statements, he and his staff set about building consensus around and commitment to achieving them at every level of the organization. First, they met with senior managers in Boston to revise and hone them; then they took the discussion to all senior managers throughout the state. Next they conducted their first statewide DSS leadership conference to include parent and family representatives, many of whom had been found to place their children at risk through abuse and neglect, in the conversation. Now DSS is planning to hold discussions at the local level. The reason for developing the value statements in a collaborative way — that is, in dialogue with DSS leaders and client representatives — is to link the value statements powerfully to daily practice.

Another step has been to recognize and make explicit the three levels of child welfare practice: clinical (the frontline social workers working with particular families), managerial (the management system that oversees, guides, supports, evaluates, and organizes the work of those social workers), and system of care (the organization’s partnership with other public services such as mental health systems, school systems, and private providers, including foster families and adoptive parents). Spence asserts, “To create coherence among these three, we need to drive the same agenda at each level and constantly maintain awareness of how they work together and reinforce one another. Otherwise, signals and incentives to everyone in the system become confused.”

Quality Improvement

Simultaneously, Harry has been working to implement quality improvement systems. He observes, “The big challenge here is that child welfare involves immense discretion all the time. I learned early in my life that no matter how many bureaucratic categories you create, the next case you take up will immediately confound those categories. The varieties of human misery are simply too complex to be captured in 10, 100, or 1,000 boxes.”

Acknowledging that regulation does play a foundational role in setting minimum standards, the commissioner believes that to truly succeed, the real work has to go beyond regulation. He fosters excellence by advocating for a mutual accountability system, which he defines as the responsibility each of us has to help others above and below us in the organization to do their very best work. He’s also careful not to impose solutions that worked elsewhere. “While certain things we learn about organizations and their management are transferable,” he explains, “this learning is only of value to the new organization you enter if it’s linked to a deep and profound regard for the craft of that organization. Otherwise, the systems you put in place can be powerfully destructive.”

One system in the queue for improvement is the current individual accountability model for social workers, which Spence believes runs counter to DSS practice values. After observing the disparity between the level of support that social workers need to do their jobs and the actual support they get, he initiated research into moving toward a team-based accountability system. In the process, he discovered that every state in the country works on the solo practitioner model, in which single social workers are responsible for an enormous number of children. These caseloads range from 11 cases per day in New York to 18 cases in Massachusetts to roughly 35 cases in Florida. Interestingly, the teams that do appear in child welfare are “expert” teams, composed of child psychiatrists, pediatricians, lawyers, and other specialists. The results of this research prompted DSS to apply for a substantial grant from a foundation (which they recently received) to develop and test a team-based model for social workers.

“To realize continuous improvement, we have to be able to identify, safely acknowledge, and learn from error as quickly as possible, and then build systems to insulate against the damaging consequences of inevitable mistakes while reducing the frequency of those mistakes.”

—Lewis H. (Harry) Spence

What the commissioner considers the linchpin of the child welfare accountability problem, however, is public pressure. He notes that, in general, child welfare appears on our radar screen when we read about the death of a child in DSS custody. The public then puts pressure on the agency to fire the “guilty” social worker so we can assure ourselves that we’re not culpable for that death. “Within child welfare, that is an experience of deep betrayal,” Spence says. “What yesterday was perfectly acceptable work today becomes grounds for firing because suddenly the boss, to remove himself from the public spotlight, needs to find someone to take responsibility for the death of the child. He usually turns a perfectly innocent party into a sacrificial lamb.”

Rather than ruthlessly penalize individuals, Spence wants the community to hold DSS accountable for instituting strong learning systems, similar to what the healthcare system has been developing in the last few years around fatalities in hospitals. “To realize continuous improvement,” he says, “we have to be able to identify, safely acknowledge, and learn from error as quickly as possible, and then build systems to insulate against the damaging consequences of inevitable mistakes while reducing the frequency of those mistakes. We cannot accomplish this by constantly punishing ordinary human error. Certainly, there need to be consequences for negligence or dereliction of duty, but if I were held to an error-free standard, I wouldn’t survive a single day of work here, nor would anyone else.”

In the face of these long-standing challenges, Harry knows he cannot expect his staff to immediately trust the new systems he’s striving to put in place. Instead, he asks them to maintain a healthy skepticism while he tries to give voice to their hope of making a real difference in child welfare. He says, “We all struggle with questions such as, ‘Do I act on the thing that first brought me here—a genuine desire to help parents and families?’ or ‘Do I drive my practice on what I know about the punitive accountability system — the risk of being publicly flayed alive?’ All I’ve tried to do is operationalize the part that says, ‘I came here to deeply care for children and families.’”

Kali Saposnick is publications editor at Pegasus Communications. Harry Spence will be a keynote speaker and session presenter at this year’s 2003 Pegasus Conference in October, where he will share the learnings that he acquired at DSS as well as in his previous positions as deputy chancellor for operations for the New York City Public Schools; governor-appointed receiver for the bankrupt city of Chelsea, Massachusetts; and court-appointed receiver of the Boston Housing Authority.

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