In February, the Good Leadership team will launch and lead a shared investment research project, where organizations will share in the costs of world-class research to answer the question: What’s the secret to creating healthy accountability in a highly collaborative workplace?
What research is already there?
The idea for this particular study came from many leaders who all shared the same challenge: creating healthy accountability in collaborative workplaces. The project started as most people do – by scanning the internet, including artificial intelligence (AI) to aid our search – to discover what research says about the potential to improve accountability in the workplace. To our surprise, the literature does not go very deep.
The majority of published literature focuses on ‘character’ and responsibility from a self-discipline perspective. It is an individual-oriented model. This is very evident in the popular RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) operational planning model that was developed in the 1950s and is consistently taught to this day. The conclusion of the RACI diagram is simple: one person is held responsible. It is in line with the hierarchical, traditional culture, a style that is slowly eroding.
In the 1990s, the dialogue shifted to a multiple, collective discussion through Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, from their book The discipline of teams, featured in Harvard Business Review. The core of their work: “No group ever becomes a team until it can hold itself accountable as a team.” By suggesting that a team is only a team if its members hold themselves accountable, the central discussion about responsibility changed.
What happens now?
Managers now know that positive teamwork is important and expected. They know it’s a challenge to encourage employees to think about and commit to team responsibility. The new, modern open system workplace, where people often work in four or more teams, provides a tangible challenge. a Article from 2020 Harvard Business Review on promoting responsibility in the workplace reported:
91% of employees believe that “holding others effectively to account” is one of their company’s most important development needs. And 82% of managers admit that they have “limited to no” ability to successfully hold others accountable.
The call for new accountability research is now. Good Leadership research results will be unveiled at the Good Leadership Conference in Minneapolis on November 22, 2024. To be part of industry-changing research, email [email protected].
