Creating Cultural Accountability

The Leader Factor

In this week's episode of Culture by Design, Tim and Junior dive into what it means to create cultural accountability in an organization. Our definition of culture is the way we interact. At an individual level, cultural accountability is being accountable for the way you behave and interact with others. High performing organizations have high cultural accountability. As always, we move from theory into practice, and Tim and Junior share tons of practical and actionable examples to help increase cultural accountability in yourself and in your organization.

Why cultural accountability? (01:38) Accountability is one of the most important concepts and components of an organization, and we often talk about accountability as it relates to performance accountability. But there's another side of the coin. Because there's a direct tie between culture and innovation, having cultural accountability will be a competitive advantage for your organization.

Running two organizations at the same time (10:21) In order to have a high performing organization with good longevity, we need to have high cultural accountability. Why? Because two contradicting things are happening at the same time in every organization: execution and innovation. In a way, we're leading two different organizations at the same time, the current organization and the organization of the future. Tim and Junior share how to navigate that dynamic.

Creativity and innovation (18:41) Creativity is an input for innovation. Our hosts pose the question: Does your environment nurture doing something differently than what we would expect? You don't press into creativity and force it through a strainer. It needs to breathe.

Create cultural accountability by establishing clarity (25:14) What are the expectations as it relates to your culture? If you have non-existent or very confusing expectations, you won't be able to hold people accountable.

Create cultural accountability by modeling and rewarding proper behavior (32:22) How are you supposed to hold someone accountable for something you don't do? If you don't see a behavior embodied, personified, modeled, it's an abstraction. Leaders need to be the example, own up to their mistakes, and encourage others to behave similarly.

Create cultural accountability through consistency (39:16) Establishing predictability is essential to creating cultural accountability. People who are only held accountable are not held accountable at all.

Important Links:
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety Behavioral Guide