The Importance of accountability and how well will you do in life.
Accountability is one of the important topics among business executives in this very competitive and “crises mode” environment we are living in.
If you are going to be an effective manager or executive, you must hold your people accountable or you will not be able to make it and will go out of business.
If you pay an employee $100.00 a day to simply pick a figure and you only get back $50.00 worth of results, the economics obviously won’t work out.
Some of you are parents. We all know that we are living in difficult times and our children now need us more than ever. Let’s face it, it is tough out there, kids are facing tough challenges and at such an early age in life, they may be having difficulties. You are here to help, to support, to give them hope and at least a path to follow. If you do your part, then it is your duty to hold the children accountable. If they don’t keep their promises, such as coming home at the agreed hour or developing a friendship with someone you know will hurt them and you have prohibited him or her to hand out with the person or even worse, if they are dumb enough to go into drugs or alcohol, you must, by all means, hold them accountable.
I know that there will be parents reading this article that will be thinking about excuses for not doing what I propose here. They will say that they work too hard, that they have to pay lots of bills, that they have the responsibility to put food on the table, etc. etc. etc.
Hey, stop that type of thinking. Your actions will come back to haunt you when your kids grow up and they get into trouble. In some cases they will turn into spoiled kids who will grow into spoiled adults who feel they are entitled to everything yet on the other hand, feel that they are not responsible for anything.
This, by the way, also happens to countries. Countries that give their citizens all kinds of monetary help, be it coupons or checks, in the long run will have a high percentage of the population that will think they are entitled to it and that won’t want to work.
Holding people accountable may sound dogmatic or narrow minded but hey, so is the law of gravity. It is simple, it is true and it acts upon any object you throw in the air. It is better to not go against the law of gravity and build a fence at the edge of the mountain before you build the hospital or the morgue at the bottom.
So, I tell all my clients that what gets measured gets done and when you hold people accountable, the good ones will float to the top and the bad ones will have to leave the company because they simply can’t hack it. Unfortunately, we're living in a time and a culture where many people don't know what it means to take responsibility. After all, what is really easy and keeps you inside your comfort zone is to blame everybody else for what's not working.
There are also excuse specialists. They are brilliant at making up excuses about why something has not been done. If they used that intelligence to solve problems and make things work, they will not need to make up excuses and they will do better in life.
The real successful people in life have the attitude of looking at every situation, as objectively as possible and then put their minds into solving the problem, making whatever work or making it better if possible.
Hey, this is not easy. Anytime you make an attempt to make things better or you offer creative solutions to solve problems, you will probably face the negativity champions that will tell you that it can’t be done, or will tell you that “yes, it can be done” to your face but then turn around and tell everyone else that you are nuts or that you are stupid. Some will even try to sabotage you and create roadblocks so that you fall flat in your face.
Why in the world would you want to go through all that trouble?
Because you are a winner! Because you assume responsibility and you are willing to be held accountable.
Successful people know that it takes guts, courage, to get out of their comfort zones, go through difficult times which almost always end sooner than you think, and wonder if they are doing the right thing, but they stick with it until they either make it or fall down. And, if they fall down, what do they do? Get up again.
You have never ever lost if you are willing to get up again. No one can accuse you of being a loser if every time you fall you get up; because that means that you are still in the game.
I will never forget a boxing match between Julio Cesar Chavez and an African American whose name I can’t remember right now. I literally mean it; Julio Cesar had lost every single round. He was tired, he was all bloodied yet he was still throwing punches. One of those punches hit the guy in the jaw and he fell down. He got up and the referee looked at him and raised three fingers in front of the guy. He must have asked the guy how many fingers was he holding up and the fighter must not have understood the question or maybe he didn’t know how to count, the thing is that he didn’t answer the question and there is a rule in boxing that if the fighter after having been knocked down doesn’t answer a question by the referee, he loses the bout.
Julio Cesar won and at that moment I realized that in life you simply can’t give up, because you might be very close to winning or your adversary might be very close to giving up and then you win.
One more thing: Responsible people take action, they do the stuff, and they don’t expect somebody else to do it. I don’t mean they don’t delegate. Sometimes you need to delegate and great managers are good at delegating and holding people accountable.
What I mean is that the best rewards go to the person who can get the job done without passing the buck to someone else or making excuses why the job wasn’t done.
The responsible manager, the responsible executive, the responsible employee does what needs to be done instead of expecting someone else to do it and they get results.
I know that some of you dear readers might be thinking that you just don’t have what it takes. You honestly believe you are not good enough or smart enough or intelligent enough. You really believe that others are better qualified than you to get the job done. Wrong thinking! Wrong attitude! Most people in history that have made a big difference have not been the smartest or most intelligent, they simply had the guts to try and they succeeded.
In an article by a psychologist named Arthur Zimmerman he quoted a speech given at The University of Southern California commencement ceremony by Chief Judge Alexander Saunders. It was quite a profound speech and I share it with you the same way Dr. Z shared it with us:
"As responsibility is passed to your hands it will not do to assume that someone else will bear the major burdens that someone else will demonstrate key convictions, that someone else will run for office, take care of the poor, visit the sick, protect civil rights, enforce the law, transmit value, and defend freedom. What you do not value will not be valued. What you do not remember will not be remembered. What you do not change will not be changed. What you do not do will not be done. You can, if you will, craft a new society. It's not a question of what to do, but simply the will to do it."
If you know a student, pass this article to him or her.
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