The growth roadblock

One of the more elusive elements of company culture is accountability. Accountability, or lack of it, is the elephant in the room at many companies. Everyone wants it, everyone needs it and most can easily identify when there is a lack of it.

For a number of people, accountability is a natural behavior. But for an organization, it’s a learned behavior. And typical of many companies, people resist the efforts of owners and managers to put policies and procedures in place to create accountability as an expectation.

When companies are in the formative stages, owners focus on getting work and building teams. They don’t have time to work on the business to the degree necessary to build the culture for the future. Their culture then evolves based on behaviors of the team members. If an owner naturally gravitates toward having high expectations for performance, accountability becomes part of the culture and employees come to accept, and aspire to, goals and expectations.

As most companies grow, when organizational performance is inconsistent, it is not through lack of effort or systems, but rather a result of weak alignment and little accountability.

Read the full story from our July issue here.