One of the most common complaints I hear from business owners and leaders is:

“My team just isn’t accountable.”

It’s usually said with frustration. Projects are late. Deadlines are missed. Commitments aren’t being followed through on. Someone promised to do something, and it didn’t happen. Naturally, the conclusion is that people need to be held more accountable.

But what if accountability isn’t the real problem?

A few years ago, I was working with a sports association leadership team that was struggling with execution. The Executive Director was convinced the issue was accountability. As we dug deeper, I asked her a few simple questions:

• What exactly were people expected to achieve?
• How was success being measured?
• When were progress updates reviewed?
• Did everyone agree on what “done” looked like?

Her answers were surprisingly vague. She couldn’t put her finger on it.

And then we realised the team wasn’t avoiding accountability. They were trying to hit targets that had never been clearly defined.

That experience reinforced something I have seen repeatedly throughout my career. In many organizations, what leaders call an accountability problem is actually a clarity problem.

It sounds simple, but we cannot be accountable to expectations if we don’t fully understand what they are. A team cannot consistently achieve outcomes that have never been clearly defined. And they certainly cannot meet standards that seem to change from week to week.

Yet many leaders unknowingly create these conditions. A role evolves over time, but the job description is never updated. A project is assigned, but ownership is shared among several people. A deadline is discussed, but never documented.

Success is assumed rather than defined. Then, when results fall short, the conversation turns to accountability. That’s like expecting someone to hit a target that isn’t there, or to use a popular analogy, asking someone to score a goal in soccer (or football, where I come from) when the goals have been removed.

Good accountability begins long before performance conversations take place.

It starts with the fundamentals. Having the right job descriptions. Clearly defining responsibilities. Ensuring everyone understands what success looks like. Assigning ownership. Establishing timelines. Creating regular opportunities to review progress. In other words, accountability is built into the system.

One of the reasons I appreciate the EOS concept of “What does success look like?” is that it forces clarity before execution begins. When people know exactly what is expected, accountability becomes far easier. There is less confusion, fewer assumptions, and fewer surprises.

This doesn’t mean everyone will always deliver. People still make mistakes. Priorities shift. Performance issues sometimes exist. Difficult conversations are still necessary.

But leaders should be careful not to jump straight to accountability when clarity has not been established first.

I’ve seen many capable people labeled as unaccountable when they were actually operating without clear direction. Once expectations were clarified, ownership improved dramatically.

True accountability is not about blame. It is not about catching people doing something wrong. It is not about creating fear. At its best, accountability is simply an agreement: This is what we’re trying to accomplish. This is who owns it. This is how we’ll know we’re succeeding. And this is when we’ll review progress. That conversation changes everything.

When accountability is approached this way, people are more likely to take ownership because they know what they’re being asked to own. Teams become more aligned. Progress becomes easier to measure. Conversations become more productive. Most importantly, leaders spend less time chasing people and more time helping them succeed.

So the next time you’re tempted to say, “My team isn’t accountable,” pause for a moment and ask yourself a different question: “Have I created enough clarity for accountability to thrive?”

You may discover the solution isn’t applying more pressure. It may be providing more clarity.

In my experience, accountability is rarely something you demand. More often, it’s something you design.

 

Photo by Getty Images for Unsplash