Habit 7 – Be accountable
| Habit 7 requires you to conduct weekly accountability meetings to move future-focused measures toward goal attainment. |
Scoreboard visibility (Habit 6) drives accountability, which is the heart and foundation of any effective and successful execution of strategies and plans. This is the core habit of success.
Effective people and successful teams operate with high degrees of accountability, either to themselves or to others. Without accountability and scoreboard visibility, individuals and team members will likely go off in all directions, each doing what he or she thinks is the most important.
Accountability is, therefore, the key difference between successful and failed execution.
This where Habit 7 of effective execution comes in – Be accountable for actions and performance.
Accountability meetings
Weekly accountability meetings are consistently held on the same day of each week. These 20- to 30-minute high-impact action-and-results meetings hold each team member accountable to each other for taking actions that will move future-focused measures toward goal attainment, even if the leader cannot attend and has to delegate the role of leading it to someone else.
Daily operational matters and issues are deliberately excluded from these accountability meetings, which only focuses on the important not the urgent.
These weekly accountability meetings have a set agenda of:
- Reviewing the latest information on a handful of past, current and future-focused measures as displayed on the players’ scoreboard.
- Reporting on the implementation progress and status of individual commitments that were made in the previous week’s meeting.
- Learning from successes and failures experienced during the week.
- Finding solutions to problems and ‘clearing the path’ by overcoming any challenges (Habit 4) experienced or encountered during the week.
- Making new weekly commitments to each other for work that is required to be done over the next five working days before the next meeting date.
The key question for each team member is, “What are the one or two most important things that I must do this week to positively move or influence one or more future-focused measures on the scoreboard?”
During these accountability meetings, team members will focus on the how for achieving their goal.
Each team will decide how to represent and track their measures visually on their scoreboard. This will improvement ownership and commitment to their goals.
When future-focused measures are not moving past measures, team members help each other by creatively finding solutions, clearing the path, or overcoming challenges (Habit 4).
Team leaders will often ask each of their team members, “What can I do this week to clear the path for you so that you can effectively action your commitments for this week?”
An accountability partner or group for individuals
If you are pursuing personal goals rather than working in team-based goals, then find an accountability partner who will hold you to account for your actions. This accountability partner can exist individually or as a community sharing the same goal as you.
An accountability partner helps you keep a commitment. It increases your odds of success. They are like co-opted members of a team-based accountability meeting.
Social psychologists have known for decades that people are motivated to work harder when others are watching. When they are observed, people run faster, are more creative, and think harder about problems. People want to impress others through their performance, and thus try harder.
Choose your accountability partner or group wisely. Make sure it works for you. Select people that are qualified to guide you, who are as committed as you are, having similar values, can be available when you are available and is genuinely interested in helping you succeed. It should be a safe place for you to receive support and encouragement.
As the African proverb says, “if you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Consider including success partners into your accountability meetings
Accountability partnerships are process-oriented. The goal is to keep you accountable to the process – “Did you do your workouts this week?”
Conversely, success partners are progress-oriented. They focus on your results over the process – “How much tangible movement toward your dreams did you make?”