Sometimes the question of accountability gets reduced to just such vague speculation.

Unclear about what results we intended in the first place, no outcome seems good enough. With no agreed upon markers for measuring progress, many of us plug along until disaster strikes.

In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss the importance of having criteria for measuring success. Criteria markers provide agreed upon discussion points for evaluating communication, production efforts, schedules, budgets as well as other outcomes.

How specific, straightforward, and measurable are your accountability targets?

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Now that you have structures that build in results and relationships that build in support, you are aware of missed deadlines, errors in judgment, miscalculated budgets, etc. right when they happen.

For accountability to serve a positive purpose (ensure that your stated intentions are accomplished), these problems need to become possibilities. Instead of failures being the end of the story, they need to be the beginning of a new story from which your team emerges smarter, quicker, and more skilled than they were before.

In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss the third component of tangible accountability: Intentionally using problems to create learning opportunities.

Imagine entire teams and processes improving in real time simply because your accountability structure provided a mechanism for learning.

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What if leadership meant ensuring the success of your team instead of punishing the failures of your team?

This week Claudia and I discuss how accountability can be a powerful means to build in the support relationships that check in occasionally, provide needed resources, are available for questions, and are committed to the project’s success.

Isolation can be a real danger when a lot is going on and people are busy with multiple priorities. Situations can change in ways that affect others or have implications to the schedule or budget. The sooner such changes are communicated, the sooner appropriate and timely adjustments can be made.

That’s when we’d be better off if those relationships were already in place and built right into the system.

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If you are joining the conversation mid-topic, you can find the entire series on Tangible Accountability here.

In motion, real time meetings, check-in points, deadlines, and specific plans that provide opportunities for issues to be addressed, problems to be anticipated, and changes to be coordinated.

What are these accountability structures that get us where we’re going and help us adjust before it’s too late?

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It’s associated either with finding people to blame after a huge mess has been made, or used as an excuse to micromanage and second-guess along the way.

Accountability is an important, positive, constructive component of healthy working cultures.

But it is neither the public shaming that the President promises for any who misspend the economic stimulus funds, nor the power-grabbing oversight that so many executives and politicians want in order to countermand anything they disagree with.

What then is “Tangible Accountability?” How does accountability become a positive, constructive force for accomplishing what a company intends?

Over the next five weeks Claudia and I will be discussing:

Tangible Accountability

Week 1: How CEO’s and Politicians Have It Backwards

Week 2: Structures That Build In Actual Results

Week 3: Relationships That Build In Constructive Support

Week 4: Motivators That Build In Lifelong Learning

Week 5: Criteria That Builds In Meaningful Measurement

Listen in.