Acronym

I don't have any specific recent examples in mind about accountability, but it's a topic I've had in mind for a while and have wanted to get into a blog post, so here goes.

Most of the time when accountability comes up, it does so in roughly this context:

"We need to hold people accountable for their actions."

People say this about politicians a lot. It often gets tossed around regarding CEOs and boards. It comes up in relation to staff and volunteer performance, as well. In general, if you're "held accountable" for something, it's bad news. It means you're the one to blame.

This perspective seems backwards to me. It's reactive. If you're in a fuss about holding people accountable for their actions, it means you likely weren't paying any attention before and during those actions. And that's a problem for an association executive, particularly if you want your staff and volunteers to do actual work.

Instead, accountability should be built into your work from step one. Here are two examples from my experience:

• In high school, I was a lifeguard at the neighborhood pool for three summers. Every day, the pool was packed with screaming kids and inattentive parents. But in three years, I never had to jump in the pool to save someone. Why? Because my fellow lifeguards and I blew our whistles. We blew our whistles a lot. No running. No diving in the shallow end. Et cetera. In other words, when you're proactive, you reduce the need to ever have to go into emergency mode.
• On the Associations Now staff, we keep a running Excel file of what articles are scheduled for upcoming issues, deadlines, and who is writing or editing what. We have a weekly staff meeting in which we all have a hard copy of the lineups for the coming few months and we discuss status updates. When my name is beside an article, everyone in the department knows that article is my responsibility, and if I let the article fall through, I know that all of my fellow editors will be fully aware of that. And on the flipside, if I get something in early, everyone else knows that, too. It's all out in the open. (This system was in place before I arrived, so I can't take credit for it. Though if I ever worked on a publication without such a process, I'd install it in a second.)

Neither of these is complicated. They're just simple matters of order, organization, and transparency. They're not revolutionary systems or advanced management practices. They just have to be practiced and maintained every day, not just when things go wrong. (As a sidenote, seeking proactive accountability through transparency offers a bonus positive result: breaking down silos.)

For associations, a significant challenge is ensuring that boards and volunteers follow through on commitments. I'm curious about what proactive methods you use at your associations to build accountability into your work with volunteers or, for that matter, with staff or even with CEOs from the board's perspective. Please share in the comments.