Achieve with Accountability

Chapter 5The Preeminent Organization

Accountability Is the Catalyst

In the “new world of work,” ideas, talent, speed, and leadership capacity are what separate top‐performing organizations, teams, and individuals from the laggards.

Driving transformational change and strategies that require shifts in human behavior may be the most difficult challenges a leader can face. What do top leaders do to gain voluntary contributions of discretionary performance from those they lead? How do they create alignment, engagement, ownership, and accountability for desired results at every level of an organization? How do they ensure that key strategies are not slowly suffocated but instead supported to produce exponential results?

We have touched on these questions in earlier chapters. We provide more ideas to consider in this chapter.

Lasting change and flawless execution of key strategies to achieve what matters most require voluntary participation from a diverse and large number of personnel. Clarity, transparency, inclusion, alignment, collaboration, empowerment, and trust are essential. When these critical elements are in place, employees will naturally become motivated, passionate, resolute, and accountable to achieve what matters most.

The mission of forging a highly accountable culture must begin with leaders creating a sparklingly lucid and scintillating picture of the exhilarating opportunities and intoxicating possibilities that exist—the “must‐achieve desired results.” Leaders must ...