Responsibility vs Accountability
Let us begin by understanding these terms better. This is a great article that teaches you about responsibility & accountability:
If you are in charge of the outcome of an event, you are accountable for it. If you are working on an event and arranging the details, then you are responsible for it.
It also highlights some key differences:
- Accountability is about impact, responsibility is about tasks
- Accountability is ongoing, responsibility can be completed
- Accountability is accepted, responsibility is assigned
What most leaders don't realize is that leveraging the nuances between these two principles provides an additional tool that can be used for career growth. In this edition of the newsletter we'll learn some useful ways to do this. To start, here is a very practical definition that I like to use:
- If you are working on something that leads to an outcome, you are responsible
- If you are the person to reach out to when an outcome doesn't happen, you are accountable
Now let's get into ways to put these principles into action.
Learning Delegation
A great way to learn skills is to practice them consciously & actively, that way we can commit them to unconscious competency. However, delegation is one of those skills that people find hard to create opportunity for, so they end up waiting around for a chance to practice delegation. This is where responsibility vs accountability can be used to self-create opportunities for delegation. Here's a practical way to implement it:
- The next time you are working on a project with multiple parts, focus on being accountable for it.
- Find the right owners that should be responsible for each of the parts.
- Even if you own some of the responsible parts, explicitly separate those roles & treat them differently.
- Whenever you identify a part you are also responsible for, start building a plan so you can delegate that in the future.
Building Trust
A key way to create trust in your role is to be consistent in delivering to others' expectations. However, delivering consistently is a hard skill to learn because unknowns evolve constantly in business. This is where responsibility vs accountability can provide a framework to manage risk.
If you treat yourself as the accountable person, then you are the person to reach out to when an outcome doesn't happen. Now most people assume that in order to deliver an outcome, we have to track everything that is being done. The reality is the opposite, in order to deliver something you have to track all the things that might not be being done. So by making yourself accountable, you practice watching out for potential risks & unknowns, which makes you more consistent at delivering outcomes over time.
Planning
Planning complex projects can quickly hit walls because there are so many moving parts and everyone has existing priorities. Separating responsibility vs accountability allows you to make more efficient plans.
Before kicking off planning, breaking down a complex project into accountabilities first effectively creates smaller projects each with their own planning & delivery cycle, and each with their own accountable person, making it much more manageable. This method can also be used recursively to create a chain of accountability.
An important thing to note is that you can leverage more people this way because folks can be accountable without ever being responsible.
Unlocking New Roles
In order to make a move to a new role (most typically a promotion), you have to build a reputation for already doing the job. The most important way you can do that is by starting to be accountable for the outcomes this new role demands. Practicing this regularly puts you in a spot for the obvious choice for this role, because you:
- expand your influence so people around you know that you're the one to come to for these outcomes
- build trust with your leadership by being the first to step up to these asks
- create a path to incremental, continuous & visible growth by staying relevant with business needs
An important thing to note is that you should not be signing up for things you are not enabled to deliver, or for things where you are going to end up being the only responsible party.
Creating Growth Opportunities
A leader can only grow when their organization grows (not in size, but in scope). This also applies to ICs as they need to grow their influence around them. But many times leaders are stuck waiting for someone to step up to the plate, or spending years coaching these skills without giving their mentees the opportunity to practice these skills. By separating responsibility vs accountability, you can create a much more organic path to growth for others. Here's how:
- Pick an outcome that you are currently accountable for
- Coach your mentee on the tasks (including details) that you would do in order to deliver this outcome
- Keep visible accountability for this outcome with yourself, but bring your mentee in with you to “do the work”
- Course correct them & offer feedback as needed
- Do this a few times until they're doing it well, then delegate the accountability to them too
This approach gives your mentees real opportunities to learn new skills without the risk of impact for making mistakes, creating a safe space for them to grow.
Final Points
Some important things to watch out for:
- None of these tools should be used to take over what others are already responsible for - don't grow your career at the cost of others
- Don't try to be accountable for outcomes without first deeply understanding everything needed to be successful - spend a lot of time listening & learning from others first
- Don't separate responsibility vs accountability unless it benefits the outcome - process for process sake only slows things down
What other ways have you been able to leverage the nuances between responsibility vs accountability to help you?