Accountability refers to the responsibility of an organization or individual to provide explanations for their actions and accept responsibility for any failures. When an organization or individual is held accountable, they may be required to answer for their actions and the outcomes of those actions. Accountability is an important aspect of good governance and helps to ensure that organizations and individuals are held responsible for their actions and are held accountable to their stakeholders. By accepting accountability, organizations and individuals can demonstrate their commitment to transparency, honesty, and integrity, which can help to build trust and credibility. The following are illustrative examples of accountability.

Actions

A customer service representative cancels a customer’s account out of spite after they perceive the customer as being rude. The customer publicizes their experience. The customer service manager is called upon to account for the incident to executive management. In this case, the customer service manager is accountable for the incident and the customer service representative is responsible for the incident.

Work Products

A creative director leads a team of 50 creative individuals and is accountable for all of their work products. If a particular work product is perceived as low quality by a client, the creative director may be called upon to account for the perceived failure.

Strategy

A Chief Information Officer develops and executes a strategy to outsource processes to a partner. If this strategy fails to achieve the benefits outlined in its business plan, the CIO is to blame.

Decision Making

A salesperson decides that a firm is not serious about making a purchase and neglects following up on the opportunity. It is soon discovered that the firm makes a large purchase from a competitor. The sales manager is called upon to account for the practices that allowed such a large purchase to go to a competitor without contest.

Policies

A bank has a de facto policy that all branch staff need to upsell 50 products a month or risk dismissal. This leads to a variety of aggressive sales tactics on the part of branch staff. The bank attempts to cast blame for these practices on individual employees and fails to take accountability for the policy that is the root cause of these practices.

Sourcing

A fashion brand outsources manufacturing to a developing country with low environmental and employment standards. The firm remains accountable for its environmental and community impact and can’t outsource this accountability.

Delegation

An IT manager delegates a highly political and risky project to a junior team member as they can predict the project is likely to fail. When the project fails, the manager attempts to avoid accountability by stating they were not involved in the project. This is a poor practice as responsibility can be delegated but accountability remains.

Culture

An airline pushes maintenance, operations and pilots to avoid delays despite an overly aggressive flight schedule and a fleet of aging equipment. Teams are rewarded for meeting the schedule but not rewarded for highlighting and addressing safety risks. These practices lead to a poor safety culture whereby it becomes normal and expected to prioritize cost and schedule over safety. When a safety incident occurs, the airline attempts to blame human error when it was the culture of the airline that caused the human error.

Accountability vs Responsibility

Accountability is the duty to govern or manage. Responsibility is the duty to complete work. When a work product or decision fails, both those who are accountable and responsible are to blame. The accountable individual has greater blame and may take all the blame if they so choose. For example, if a creative director assigns a design to an associate designer that ends up disappointing the client it would be common for the creative director to take the blame as they should have managed the quality of work outputs. It is a poor practice for leaders to attempt to avoid accountability by assigning all blame to responsible individuals.

Accountability vs Authority

Authority is the power or right to direct, control and command. Authority always implies accountability. An system that grants authority without accountability is essentially broken. For example, a corporate executive who is protected from accountability by the terms of their contract may have little incentive to make decisions that are in the best interests of stakeholders.

Corporate governance refers to the system of rules, practices, and processes by which a company is directed and controlled. It involves balancing the interests of a company’s many stakeholders, such as shareholders, management, customers, suppliers, financiers, government, and the community. Corporate governance also provides the structure through which the objectives of the company are set, and the means of attaining those objectives and monitoring performance.

Effective corporate governance is essential for the long-term success of a company, as it helps to ensure that the company is run in a responsible and transparent manner. This includes ensuring that the company is accountable to its stakeholders, that it follows good business practices, and that it is compliant with relevant laws and regulations.

There are key components of corporate governance:

1. Board of directors: The board of directors is responsible for overseeing the management of the company and making strategic decisions on behalf of the shareholders.
2. Shareholders: Shareholders have a stake in the company and are entitled to a share of the profits. They can also participate in important decisions, such as the appointment of directors and the approval of major transactions.
3. Management: Management is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the company and is accountable to the board of directors and the shareholders.
4. Auditors: Auditors are independent parties who review the financial statements of the company to ensure that they are accurate and transparent.
5. Stakeholders: Stakeholders include any individuals or groups that have an interest in the company, such as employees, customers, suppliers, financiers, and the community.

Overall, corporate governance is an important aspect of running a successful business, as it helps to ensure that the company is managed in a responsible and transparent manner and is accountable to all of its stakeholders.

Power structures are the systems or frameworks that are used to exert control or influence over a government, organization, or resource. These structures can take various forms, such as hierarchical systems, networks of relationships, or systems of rules and regulations. Power structures often reflect the distribution of power and resources within a given system, and can shape the decision-making processes and outcomes within that system. Understanding and analyzing power structures is important for understanding how power is exercised and how decisions are made within a given system, and can help to inform strategies for influencing or changing those systems. The following are common types of power structure.

Authority
A system of roles whereby individuals hold the authority to direct resources and make decisions.

Governance
Oversight bodies that are accountable for the performance and behavior of an organization.

Management
Individuals who are accountable and responsible for the strategy, decisions and operations of an organization.

Chain of Command
A hierarchy whereby employees carry out orders based on the commands of individuals with authority.

Communications
Communication channels such as meetings and a system of corporate email that is used to direct and control an organization.

Information Technology
Information technologies that are used to implement systems of internal control.

Segregation Of Duties
A system of checks and balances whereby no single person has too much power. For example, a system of multiple validations and approvals for payments to partners.

Principles
Guidelines that are adopted by an organization to direct strategy and decision making.

Processes
Work that follows a predefined series of steps each with predefined procedures. For example, a budget approval process that requires steps of due diligence before a budget can be approved or funds released.

Measurement
Systems of measurement that allow governance bodies and management to monitor an organization.

Standards
Rules, norms and models that are adopted by an organization to guide outputs.

Performance Management
A system of goal setting, monitoring, evaluation and feedback to reward employees who meet expectations and discipline those who don’t.

Audit Trail
Recording data so that strategy, decisions, transactions and events can be reconstructed in future.

Audits
An independent review of an organization.

Servant leadership is a leadership style in which the leader puts the needs of the team or organization above their own, and focuses on empowering and supporting their followers to achieve their goals. This approach is based on the idea that the leader’s primary role is to serve their team or organization, and to help them grow and develop as individuals and as a group. Servant leaders are often seen as humble and selfless, and they prioritize the well-being and success of their team or organization above their own personal interests or ambitions. This leadership style can be effective in fostering a positive and collaborative work environment, as well as in helping organizations achieve their goals.

Philosophy

The philosophy of servant leadership was known to antiquity. For example, a similar idea is clearly mentioned in the Tao Te Ching, a text credited to the 6th-century BC sage Lao Tzu. The idea here is that gentle influence is more powerful than authority, control and pressure.

A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honor people, they fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, “We did this ourselves.”
~ Tao Te Ching, Chapter 17, Lao Tzu

Management Theory

The term “servant leadership” was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in a 1970 essay titled “The Servant as Leader.” In this essay, Greenleaf argued that the primary role of a leader should be to serve their team or organization, and to help them grow and develop as individuals and as a group. He proposed that this approach to leadership could be more effective and satisfying than traditional styles of leadership, which focus on controlling and directing others. Greenleaf’s ideas have influenced the development of the servant leadership approach, which has been embraced by organizations and individuals around the world.

Influencing Beyond Authority

Servant leadership suggests that a leader not rely on their authority to get things done. This idea completely transformed management theory in the 1970s whereby roles that rely on authority and control are referred to as management and roles that rely on influencing are referred to as leadership. In this context, anyone can be a leader such that defacto power within an organization is often difficult to identify. For example, a respected and brilliant software developer may be the true source of strategy and decision making for an entire IT department of a large firm as their ideas are so often accepted, communicated upwards and implemented.

Power Behind the Throne

The power behind the throne is an archetype of myth and history whereby an individual gently influences to wield great power without any formal authority. If this were done out of a desire to be useful as opposed to powerful and personally wealthy, it could be described as servant leadership.

Abundance Mentality

Abundance mentality is the philosophy that their is enough for everyone such that the success of others doesn’t diminish your own successes and opportunity. This calls for a collaborative and supportive approach to leadership that is consistent with the motivation to serve. For example, a manager who doesn’t try to keep talent team members down as a threat to their own position but instead provides them with every opportunity to grow.

Humble Leadership

Humble leadership is the use of authority with a sense of humility to avoid the common traps of power such as narcissism, a sense of entitlement, the misuse of authority to support your own position and becoming out of touch with frontline realities. Humble leadership is essentially servant leadership by a different name that has dropped the idea that the leader rely on influencing over formal authority.

Flat Organization

A flat organization is an organization with few levels of formal authority. This can be used to encourage servant leadership whereby everyone is forced to influence as opposed to using authority and control. Assuming there is a servant leader at the top, it may be possible to shape the culture of these organizations towards rewarding positive behaviors that serve goals over negative behaviors that serve the individual at the expense of goals.

Creative Tension

Creative tension is disagreement that remains civil. Servant leadership should not be confused with a lack of assertiveness and avoidance of disagreement. To be clear, servant leaders are motivated by a drive to be useful and the use of influence over control. Beyond that, their style will vary with some charging into lively debate and others being more of a quiet voice of reason.

Change Management

Change management is the practice of leading aggressive change that can expect problems. A basic principle of change management is that you sideline anyone who seeks to derail change and empower anyone who works to be useful. Servant leaders in a firm thrive where this occurs as power structures often try to obstruct change and get pushed out of the way to the benefit of anyone who is trying to be useful.