Accountability and Responsibility

by Laine and Josh | Organizations, People

January 17, 2019

Accountability and responsibility sound like the same thing. They definitely represent the same concept – ownership.

“This thing is mine.”
“I got this.”
“I want this to be successful so hard that I will make sure it succeeds.”

In fact, the concepts of accountability and responsibility are very close. There’s one main difference, though:

Accountability is ownership by an individual. Responsibility is ownership shared by a group.

Ownership in any form can’t be forced – its very nature means that the recipient has to be willing to own. Ownership can either be taken (“I’ll take this thing, it’s mine now.”), or accepted (“You want me to take over this thing? Okay, I agree!”). The ability to take over ownership of something means that it either has no current owner or that the current owner is willing to give it up (including being told by a superior). Sensing a theme? The flow of ownership is voluntary, all around.

The flow of ownership must be voluntary.

What Does this Look Like?

Scenario

An application breaks in such a way that customers are affected. A Root Cause Analysis (RCA) meeting is set up among developers, admins, management, etc to discuss the reason(s) the break happens.

Example: RCA Fail

The RCA goes perfect. No one wastes time worrying about or establishing blame, they find the true root cause quickly, and a plan is made to fix what needs to be fixed – everyone agrees, and it makes sense. A particular group says that they will take responsibility for fixing that root cause issue.

Six months later, the same problem happens again, and customers are again affected. The team that took responsibility for the fix feels shame upon all of their houses.

Example: RCA Win

Specific individuals within the responsible group agree to:

send out the recap
make the work ticket to track the necessary fix
prioritize the work appropriately among the other work the group is responsible for

Six months later, no repeat issue! Why?

The difference is accountability – ownership by specific people.

Responsibility = Teamwork

Responsibility is ownership shared by a group.

Responsibility is primarily about clarity and teamwork. Clarity tells a team what to do by explaining their goals, objectives, and exactly what their designated responsibilities are. Teamwork helps the members of the team support each other while they do those things (*cough* community *cough*). Some organizations are great at responsibility, but they still struggle.

Accountability = Necessary Risk

Accountability is ownership by an individual.

We said in the successful RCA example that the reason for the success is the accountability of the team members who took on specific tasks. Accountability is exactly that – someone taking ownership of an objective or task. This puts their reputation and their overall trust level on the line in exchange for the ability to say “I will make sure this happens.” Due to the extreme clarity about whose “fault” it is if something goes wrong, this is inherently riskier than a team’s responsibility.

Despite the risk, there are benefits to accountability. If a person has clear ownership of a task, they also have the authority to make sure the task is done – and done correctly. If they do the task well, they also get back exponentially better reputation and exponentially more trust than they initially gambled.

Which One is Better? Haha, trick question!

Responsibility is awesome, and it’s a great step in the right direction. However, responsibility alone is never going to be enough to accomplish things. A group can take responsibility for a list of tasks but they’ll never complete any of them until a specific person takes or accepts accountability for each task.

This is true on a larger scale for an organization too – an organization’s broad objectives have tasks that need to be completed for those objectives to be successful. Those tasks will not get done until one person takes them on.

In the end, if the goal is to make the organization as effective as possible, stuff needs doing. Responsibility tells groups that some of that stuff is theirs to do, and accountability gets it done – both help people, teams, and organizations be successful.

Inspiration for this post came from this article – lots of great follow-up info if you’re interested.

Quick Addendum

A caution – it’s important not to over commit with accountability. Teams (responsibility) can flex tasks between people (or shuffling task priority), and they can grow in capacity by adding people. Individuals (accountability) can’t flex in capacity to the extent teams can. The most effective people can flex their capacity when necessary – but within limits and ideally with a healthy balance in order to remain effective.