The single most significant reason for managers in organisations not getting the leadership thing right is that they are held accountable for the wrong things. They are held accountable for what they get from people, not for what they give to them. In essence what happens is the following: Corporate leadership (Babelaas) hold enterprise leadership (Baas) accountable for the bottom line. Enterprise leadership therefore have the view that they are there to serve their corporate bosses with the result.

This result they get from their middle managers and/ or supervisors (Koos). This means that these supervisory people are seen to be there to serve the manager with a result which they get from the worker (Klaas) who in turn sees his job to be one of serving his supervisor. This means that all of these people have their attention directed to their superordinate. The overall result of this is that the entire organisation is aimed away from the customer who is left to wander about and attend to herself.

The challenge is therefore to invert the direction of service so that the organisation is principally aimed at making a contribution rather than being principally aimed at producing a financial result. This can only be done if at every level people are held principally accountable for what they are personally contributing, rather than what they are getting out. This means that every worker or Klaas has to be held accountable for what he is doing and every leader has to be held accountable for the leadership which he or she is providing his or her immediate subordinates. Thus:

While this is almost stupidly obvious, I have found it surprisingly difficult to get people to apply this kind of insight to their day to day activities. The result is that you frequently have people experiencing a breathtaking “AHA” in training which is then turned into huge frustration when they attempt to apply these ideas at work. The reason for this is that their day to day activities are set up in such a way as to continuously focus on bottom line results. When they report they report on results.

This implies that to engage themselves in activities which have a leadership focus they have literally to spend time on matters which they are not held accountable for. This amounts to them having to deliberately take their eyes off the ball. In this sense the very reporting formats used in organisations are the problem. This implies that the whole problem of leadership and employee commitment can only be addressed if the ball is changed, if people are held accountable for new things, things which they should be contributing.

What follows is an exploration of an alternative accountability format for organisations. The format is based on the insight that it is fundamentally unjust to hold people accountable for results. Take a farmer, for example. The farmer does all in his power in a season to ensure that the crop is a success. He listens to the weather forecasts, he ploughs at the correct time, fertilizes correctly, plants at the right time and does all the things during the season which would ensure that the crop is a success. Right at the end of the season a terrible and unseasonable hailstorm completely obliterates the crop. It would clearly be hugely unjust to hold the farmer accountable for the poor crop, since that would be implying that he wilfully destroyed it.

The converse is also true. Assume the farmer had an excellent crop this year because weather conditions went his way for the entire season. However, on examining what happened we discover that he could have had an even bigger crop if he had fertilized correctly, something which he neglected to do. In this case, even though the results were good the farmer is still accountable for his negligence.

As we have argued before, accountability relates to the will. To hold a person accountable for the final result is to hold a person accountable for matters that do not directly relate to what they have deliberately and wilfully done. It is the same thing as holding someone accountable for what someone else does to them. The only thing that you have power over is what you are giving, what is leaving your hands. What you get is, by definition, in the power of the other and you therefore have no control over it. You therefore cannot justifiably be held accountable for what you are getting. You can only be held accountable for what you are giving.

Related to this is the problem of separating accountability and responsibility. I often come across this in organisations; the subordinate is responsible for doing the thing and the boss is held accountable for the fact that the thing is done. As soon as you create this split between responsibility and accountability you have nullified the subordinate’s will. In that instant he has become an inanimate tool in the hand of his boss. He therefore has no volition of his own, his own capacity to deliberately make a difference has been nullified by the fact that his boss is now accountable.

What our example with the farmer demonstrates is that you may have a situation where there is a positive accountability consequence (praise or reward) in a situation where the results are poor. In 1997 I had an opportunity to experiment with the accountability format at a small resins company in Durban. The work specifically focused on their accounting function and in that function we honed in on the Debtors Department. The line of command going up from the debtors clerk was the debtors supervisor, the accountant and the MD of the business.

The Debtors clerk had two principle functions; one was the collection of debt and the other was to hand over bad debts to the lawyers once a debt was deemed irrecoverable. In both cases the performance of the clerk was below the standard required of her. In the case of collection she was expected to get all monies in within 45 days and her recovery rate was over 60 days. She was required to hand over accounts to the lawyers once they had exceeded 120 days but on average this only happened after 150 days.

Undertaking to hold people accountable only for what they are contributing we first set up an interaction between the debtor’s clerk and her supervisor. I primed the supervisor before the interaction, warning her that she could only hold her clerk accountable if the clerk had the means and the ability to do what was required of her. Under the category of means I listed things such as tools, authority, and standards, and with regard to ability I reiterated that this meant both why and how the job should be done. The discussion between the clerk and the supervisor went something like the following:

Sup: Tell me, Betty, why are your debtors’ days so bad?

Clerk: What do you mean?

Sup: Your debtors’ days, they are too high.

Clerk: Says who?

Sup: I say!

Clerk: But why? The money comes in doesn’t it?

Sup: But only after 60 days.

Clerk: Is this a problem?

Sup: Of course it’s a problem. It should be here within 45 days. If it is not here within 45 days it puts the cash flow of the factory in a very tight spot.

Clerk: It’s the first time I’ve heard of this.

Sup: Really?

Clerk: Yes.

Sup: Oh! Well, now you know, it is your job to keep debtors’ days at 45 days. When should you be handing debts over for collection?

Clerk: At 120 days.

Sup: But why do you only hand them over at 150 days?

Clerk: Whenever I want to hand an account over our beloved sales director Rex comes running in here in a flap warning me not to freak out his customers. Talk to him.

Clearly in both cases the clerk did not have the means to do what her supervisor was wanting to hold her accountable for. In the case of the debtors’ days the standard had not been made clear to her and in the case of handing over debts she did not have the authority since the decision not to pursue these accounts legally was being taken by the Sales Director. On the basis of this discussion the supervisor then had the following discussion with her manager, the accountant:

Acc: How’s your clerk doing?

Sup: Not very well, I’m afraid. In both the areas of collection and hand over she is performing below standard.

Acc: What’s the problem with the collection?

Sup: She claims she didn’t know that she had to have a debtors’ days average of 45 days.

Acc: Do you remember telling her what the standard is?

Sup: To be honest, no.

Acc: Why not?

Sup: She has only been with me for less than a year and you know how hectic things have been in the last year.

Acc: That’s true, and one of the reasons why it has become so hectic is because we have to do a continuous cash flow juggle to compensate for our poor collection. Is that not so?

Sup: Yes.

Acc: In that case you have been quite negligent not to stipulate a standard for her, haven’t you?

Sup: I suppose so.

Acc: I want you to view this as a warning. Don’t ask someone to do something for you if you are not going to stipulate the standard for the task.

Sup: I’m sorry.

Acc: What’s happening with the hand over?

Sup: Rex stops us from going after those accounts because he doesn’t want us to upset his customers. The whole issue is out of our hands.

Acc: You’re right.

In the case of the debtors’ days the supervisor was clearly accountable for not having stipulated the standard to her subordinate, but as far as the hand over was concerned she was in much the same position as her clerk. She did not have the authority to deal with this matter either. What follows was the last discussion between the MD and the accountant.

MD: How’s your debtors supervisor doing?

Acc: Well as you know there have been issues in the debtors department for some time. It turns out that she had never stipulated the standard for debt collection to her clerk. Her clerk did not know that she had to get the money in within 45 days.

MD: Amazing! What did you do?

Acc: I gave her a verbal warning and told her that I expect her to stipulate the standard she requires for all tasks.

MD: Well done!

Acc: Thank you. The issue is not nearly as clear with the hand over problem.

MD: How so?

Acc: Well, Rex keeps on stopping them when they want to go for an account because he’s afraid of upsetting his customers.

MD: I see. Is collection not an accounting function?

Acc: Yes, it is.

MD: And are you and Rex not on the same level?

Acc: We are.

MD: So why do you let him interfere in your area?

Acc: Well, I don’t want to upset him and I can see his point sometimes.

MD: So you are letting your subordinate’s authority be undermined because you don’t want to take on your colleague. This is not acceptable. Your job is to give your people the means to do what is required of them, and that includes authority.

I must admit that I would personally have liked to see this last interaction going a bit further, like the MD saying something like “This is not an issue of negligence. It is an issue of weakness. I’m listing a demerit against your bonus calculation for this year”. The reason why I would have liked to see such harsh consequences is because not doing what is correct on the basis of fear is the same as deliberate malevolence. I therefore felt that punishment would have been more appropriate than censure.

What this process did indicate, however, was that different accountability consequences were appropriate for the same poor result. Thus:

Debtor’s days:

The clerk is not accountable because she did not have the standard stipulated for the task.


The supervisor is negatively accountable (censure) for not having stipulated the standard.


The accountant is positively accountable (recognition) for having done the appropriate thing in holding the supervisor accountable for not stipulating a standard.

Hand Over:

The clerk is not accountable because she did not have the authority to challenge the sales director.


The supervisor is not accountable because she did not have the authority to challenge the sales director.

The accountant is negatively accountable for not having dealt with his subordinate’s authority problem.

In the past the same consequences would have been in force all the way down the line for the poor performance of the debtors function. Everybody would have been metaphorically beaten up. This created the conditions where the clerk doing the work became utterly discontented and disinterested, and everybody else would have been doing bits of her job (including the MD who on occasion would vent his spleen on a hapless customer).

This madness of holding everyone accountable for the final result is therefore the key factor that precipitates the kind of crisis management which Covey warns us against. Until one painstakingly identifies who should be contributing what and who is therefore accountable for what there is no way out of the quagmire. Unless one makes the time to unravel this accountability problem this crisis will remain. The accountability format is a tool whereby the leader can hold people appropriately accountable: Schematically it can be represented as follows:

Let us first examine the format as it applies to a person doing a task, rather than as it applies to a person who leads people: We will use the basic format which was produced for the Firestone factory in Port Elizabeth. I am deliberately not indicating the whole thing because it was quite lengthy, so what follows is a highly edited version.

To start, an explanation of the categories of the accountability format. Other than the employees name, the first piece of information on the top left hand side of the accountability form looks at the two key measures at issue in a tyre factory, namely number of tyres produced and waste and scrap. These measure are what one can call consequential measures. They really only give one an overall feel of how the employee is faring. They are not in themselves useful in terms of either remediating problems or in terms of holding the person accountable.

The reason for this is that any one of the accountabilities stipulated in the accountability column could result in a poor overall result either in terms of volumes or quality. The idea is therefore not to hold the employee accountable for these because that would be equivalent to holding the farmer accountable for the crop. However, a discussion about a game of cricket has to start somewhere, and a useful place to start must be the overall performance as measured by the final result.

The first column on the left comprises a listing of the individual things which the worker has to do, along with the standard that these tasks should be done in terms of. It is legitimate to refer to a standard which already exists, such as “set guide lights in terms of specification”. In other words, the actual blow by blow specification does not have to be repeated in the accountability format because that would make it prohibitively cumbersome. However, in so far as a specification is referred to it has to be readily available to the worker.

The next column is the column whereby the supervisor monitors the worker’s performance with regard to his accountabilities. The information in this column does not have to be collected on the basis of a blitzkrieg audit. It could be done over the period of a week or how ever long the reporting cycle of the employee is meant to be. The point about this gathering of data is that at the end of the measured period there should be a definite indication whether the employee did or did not achieve the required standard for the task.

If the worker did not achieve the standard stipulated for any given task then the next two columns have to be considered. These columns require the supervisor to consider whether the non conformance was due either to a lack of means or a lack of ability. If either of these two matters are at issue then the supervisor should indicate what the problems were and immediately set about rectifying them.

Should the subordinate’s performance be below standard for a task and there are no problems relating to means or ability then the appropriate accountability should be documented in the accountability column.

If, in the supervisor’s view, the subordinate deliberately acted below standard then the appropriate entry to put in the accountability column would be “punish”. If the person had just been careless the appropriate entry would be “censure”.

Likewise, if the entries in the second column suggest that the employee’s performance was on or over standard then the means and the ability columns would, by definition, not have any entries in them. What would then appear in the accountability column opposite these positive accountabilities would be either the words “recognition” or “reward” depending on whether the performance was on or over standard.

First prize would be that this accountability format is made compatible with both the disciplinary and reward procedure. It means, for example, that a person could earn merits or demerits depending on the entries in the accountability column. The advantage this has over performance management systems lies in the fact that this is an ongoing performance measure, rather that a thumb suck done by a boss on an annual basis that is based as much on his prejudices as on performance. It also means that people are disciplined for performance, an exceedingly rare event in the South African workplace.

Should all the performance measures in the second column be on or over standard it would imply that every record in the accountability column would be positive. This means that the worker is absolutely on top of their current job and could do with his job being expanded. This growth of the job can only ever be in terms of a new means, either in terms of more authority, or new tools or an increased standard. This new means should be recorded in the New Means column and should be seen to be step 1 of the five steps to empowerment. The five steps suggest:

1. Identify the next step forward.

2. Train people to take that step in terms of both why and how.

3. Test them (why and how).

4. Hand over the decision.

5. Hold them accountable.

The new means would remain in the New Means column until the completion of the third step of the five steps. At this point this new means would then be added to the accountability list on the accountability format. This implies that the accountability format should not be seen to be the same as a job description. It is designed to grow along with the growth of the person, which means that the accountabilities listed in the accountability column are very much a moving target.

The accountability format therefore also provides a tool whereby the incremental process of suspending control can be managed. It is therefore simultaneously an instrument for furthering, on an incremental basis, the results of snake killing exercises or any other processes aimed at devolving authority down the hierarchy.

The idea is that every supervisor has a file for every one of his subordinates. Every week (or however long the formal reporting cycle is) the supervisor completes an accountability form for every one of his subordinates. and puts it on the subordinates file. These formats will obviously change over time as the person grows. This therefore forces the supervisor to take the growth of his subordinate seriously. However, the format only focuses on the growth categories and, we have argued, that the job of the leader is both to care for and to grow the subordinate. Therefore to be a complete record of the subordinate this file has to include information that will enable the supervisor to care. This information could be gathered in terms of the following form:

The idea is not that this form should be completed like a questionnaire but that it serves as a place to record a developing picture which the supervisor builds of his subordinate. The data gathered for this form has to be gathered casually in informal conversation. There should be at least two entries in the columns per month. At the end of a quarter the supervisor gets a fresh care form for the next quarter. He summarises the entries on the old forms into the columns on the left hand side of the new care form and start the process all over again.

Once a month the supervisor has his reporting interaction with his manager. He comes armed with each of his subordinate’s files and the manager then uses that information to complete the supervisor’s accountability format. Again, we will use the same basic approach which we followed at Firestone:

The manager would follow the same procedure in terms of completing the accountability form for the supervisor as the supervisor did for the worker. He would use as his principle source of information the accountability forms which the supervisor completed for his subordinates. The information written down in the workers accountability under means and ability would give the manager a very good idea as to whether the supervisor was providing the subordinates with the means and the ability which they required.

Exactly the same format can be used for the manager’s boss to hold the manager accountable for what he is doing with the supervisors. It means that the categories used in the accountability format for leaders are universal. At every level the superordinate leader will examine the accountability formats of the subordinate leader’s people to assess whether the subordinate was doing what was required of him. The material contained in the columns of the subordinate leader’s people’s forms will be the information required for the superodinate leader to complete the rows on the subordinate leader’s form. For example, if the information in the accountability column is inappropriate, the boss would then indicate that the subordinate leader is not recognising or censuring appropriately, and so on.