Let's Discuss "Accountability"

May 12, 2021, Wednesday, 5:38 PM

For the proactive ones out there, do you also sometimes feel that you want to be responsible, but you also don't want to mess things up?

If you're a freelancer or a small business owner and you're not answering to demands from anyone (except your clients and customers), then it's probably more relatable for you to always be, or choose to be, on top of things - finish that task that's been pending for weeks because your employee's on sick leave; make that cold call to a potential client, even though you have your own sales team, before anyone else closes a deal with them; or start drafting that proposal, because an opportunity can't wait for your business partner's perfect composition that cannot meet the due date.

Just be accountable for another person's task, because at the end of the day, it's for the sake of your business or gig anyway.

After all, you decide how you want to run your days and how you want your working environment to be.

But if you're employed and working for a company, especially a professional industry, there are times when the best move of accountability is by not involving yourself even though you can get the task done in 30 minutes, and the team handling it takes 3 days to finish.

Grab your coffee and let's talk about this.

The corporate world has been demonized for many practices that seem to take away creativity, freedom, and even ethical decision making. While there are systems that indeed need to be improved or taken down completely, some implicit standards or cultures that are in place can be too delicate to be labelled as "inefficient" or "unproductive" or "restricting," even though they may feel so.

For example, in many organizations, especially those under complex, highly regulated fields such as business, finance, or law, segregation of duties is very crucial. The ones executing the transaction must be independent from the ones approving the transaction. The ones collecting the data must be separate from the ones processing the data. There are measures in place to make sure the responsibilities are not mixed up.

The expectation is that everybody must work well together, but at the same not assume control on one another's performance of the respective tasks. It's always clear what the roles are, and no one must do the tasks that are not assigned under their role.

Of course, the presumption is that you applied for a job that you know you can do well at. And of course, the reality is not always the same, and especially for the young ones, all they have is passion to learn, deliver well, and help the team out.

Often, these passionate young ones are those who go over and beyond their duties for the team, and, while commended later on for being proactive, a team player, and responsible, they, or their managers, end up answering scrutiny or notices of violation or malpractice from the senior management or worse from the regulators.

Can you relate to that?

Note that this most often applies to duties or projects with non-life threatening consequences. In fact the tasks, in the basic sense, are as futile as working on excel sheets or Word files (yes, we know some documents are just so, so important in our jobs, but hear us out). Yet, those simple tasks can make or break the project. Or, will incur penalties for the company when not done right. Sometimes you know you shouldn't be making inputs in your colleague's working file, but for the sake of getting things done and helping the team out, you help finish the document.

And then, audit season comes and the auditors found a trail of you directly editing the document, when your role mandates that you shouldn't.

Now, you have to answer to your boss
and your boss will need to explain to the higher ups
and you learn the hard way that,
to do things right,
it is not about YOU doing the things right.
The right thing, and the real challenge,
is to EDUCATE and transfer your knowledge,
to the right people who must get the job done.

Educating colleagues at work is not only done vertically, from top to bottom, but also done horizontally, diagonally, and in any other direction, as the need calls.

We think that the real challenge here is when to step up in terms of transferring what you know, when you know somebody else needs it. It's most especially challenging when you're young and still in the learning process itself, but come to think of it, you may be able to leverage your position and frame it in a way that you're INVITING others to learn with you along the way.

On the other side, if you're the one in need of help, the best way to be accountable is to educate yourself and SEEK HELP. This is the more anxiety-inducing side of the situation, having to get something done when you don't know it, but it sure is the less guilt-tripping.

It's so much easier to admit that you are wrong because you don't know enough than to admit that you are knowledgeable but did nothing to help.

Maybe when we gain more experience and when we mature professionally, we'll eventually find it easier to navigate around these situations. For now, please let us know your thoughts. Would love to read your comments below.

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