BTWN FIELD NOTES · ISSUE 06
Accountability Series · Part 1 of 3
Eight in ten people hear accountability and think punishment. I used to be one of them.
But accountability was never just the hammer. It's a tool belt and the tool we reach for most, the correction after something goes wrong, isn't even the one we need most.
There's a researcher at Harvard who studies this, Amy Edmondson, and she defines accountability simply as ownership. An internal commitment to do your part well. Not a punishment waiting to happen.
Accountability can be praise when something goes right. It can be a measuring stick, showing you exactly where you stand. It can be the thing that pulls something better out of someone, before anything ever goes wrong. Use the same tool for everything, and you'll either bruise people who needed encouragement, or hand a hammer to someone who needed a measuring stick instead.
Here's where I've watched accountability actually break down and it's earlier than anyone expects. It's not in the correction. It's in the Ask.
Early in my career, I'd walk into a room and ask for something a number, a result, a fix without ever defining what done actually looked like. I told myself I was being efficient. I was actually being vague, and vague is where accountability quietly dies before it ever gets a chance to start.
When the ask is fuzzy, the agreement that follows is fuzzy too. People nod. They say "got it." But "got it" to what, exactly? Nobody actually knows. And when the result doesn't match what I had in my head a thing I never said out loud, I reach for the hammer. Not because they failed. Because I never gave them a real target to hit.
That's not their accountability gap. That's mine.
The fix isn't complicated, but it is uncomfortable, because it asks you to be specific in a way that exposes you. A real Ask sounds like: what does done actually look like? By when? Who owns which piece?
And the Agree that follows isn't a nod it's someone repeating the rail back to you in their own words, so you both know you're standing on the same ground before anyone takes a single step.
The most accountable moment in the entire loop happens before anyone's done anything at all.
THIS WEEK'S FIELD TOOL
One question to sit with this week:
Where have I been handing out hammers when what the moment actually needed was a clearer ask?
Pick one upcoming conversation a task, a deadline, a handoff. Before you assign it, write down what "done" actually looks like, in one sentence. Then ask the other person to repeat it back in their own words.
That's the rep. Not the correction. The clarity that makes correction rare.
Next issue: Do and Show, what happens after the agreement, and why receipts matter more than promises.
— Jason