Describes accountability and ownership in workplace

1. Prepared by Prince Eugo ChemE 1

2.  Accountability and ownership go hand in hand but are two different things.
 Accountability is to be held responsible for fulfilling your duties and
responsibilities. It requires answers and has consequences.
 Accountability is an external process defined by others. Someone – the
organization or your manager – will hold you accountable by providing goals and
measuring progress.
 However, a sense of ownership is not something that you can impose. It's intrinsic
rather than extrinsic, just like motivation.
 People choose what drives them. The good news is that when team members feel
ownership, they don't just care about achieving the goals: they go the extra mile.
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3.  In healthy cultures, people have a strong sense of ownership.
 They don't need external pressure to achieve lofty goals. No one is waiting for
someone else to do something – or to tell them to do something.
 Where ownership is the motivation, accountability is taking responsibility for the
outcome.
 Taking ownership of a project doesn't mean you own it – it means you care about
your role and the overall outcome.
 Taking ownership is a commitment. You feel responsible to yourself, not just
others.
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4.  A culture that lacks ownership is easy to spot, usually manifesting in:
1. Silos across teams: When people focus on small pieces or don't do something because
it's not their job.
2. Bystander effect: Everybody sees the trash, but no one cares to pick it up (more on this
later).
3. Do as I say, not as I do: Managers expect people to operate in a certain way but then
act as if rules don’t apply to themselves.
 Ownership-driven employees take the initiative – they commit to tasks as they see
them arise and don't need to be told what to do.
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6.  Accountability is doing what's rewarded or measured; ownership is taking good
care of your work and responsibilities.
 People understand what they are accountable for – consequences for
underperformance are often clear. However, being held to account causes anxiety.
A recent neuroscientific study revealed that we respond to being rated with a
sense of being threatened — we feel unsafe when someone puts us in a box in this
way.
 Accountability systems are the formal and informal ways that leaders talk about,
assess, and reinforce the contributions of team members.
 They include everything from annual performance appraisals and routine check-
ins to measuring progress toward goals and tracking project milestones.
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7.  Ownership inspires people to go above and beyond. It's a state of mind in which
you feel in charge.
 Not only do you have the motivation, agency, and willingness to step up – you will
also do whatever it takes to achieve the goals.
 Psychological ownership is the experience of being psychologically tied to
something, creating a powerful emotional connection.
 As behavioral scientist Francesca Gino wrote, "The state of psychological
ownership is not only cognitive but also affective: simply by calling an entity —
whether an object, another person, or a job — 'mine' suggests that we have an
emotional connection to it.“
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8.  Building a culture of ownership is the result of multiple elements:
 Challenging work and problems to solve
 Meaningful goals with a clear purpose
 Autonomy to decide how to achieve goals
 Connection to the team, job, and organization
 Opportunities to grow as a result of going above and beyond
 Feeling appreciated by colleagues and leaders
 Research by Perce et al. uncovered three roots that contribute to psychological
ownership are efficacy, self-identity, and belonging.
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9.  Efficacy is the ability to produce a result – the satisfaction of creating an outcome
based on one's actions.
 Self-identity results from what we feel we own: if you love your job, you attach
your identity to it. Self-identification can be felt toward a purpose, team, job, or
company. Finally, belonging is a fundamental part of being human, as we are
social animals who need to be connected to others to thrive.
 For an employee, psychological ownership is not always necessary for work but
definitely enhances it. A study by the University of Minnesota Duluth found that
psychological ownership is associated with job satisfaction, commitment to the
organization, and performance.
 The same study uncovered that accountability and responsibility result from
psychological ownership rather than drive it. When we feel ownership, we expect
accountability from ourselves and others.
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10.  Accountability is the path to psychological ownership.
 A manager responsible for the success of a project will feel personally accountable
for the outcome but will also expect participation and accountability from team
members.
 By feeling this type of personal and managerial responsibility, a sense of
ownership for the outcome quickly develops.
 Interestingly enough, according to research by David McConville, formal
ownership rights (such as stock options or profit-sharing schemes) don't
necessarily increase psychological ownership and productivity.
 Ownership is not about making people feel like owners but that they own their
work.
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12.  Often leaders are so obsessed with creating alignment around goals and metrics
that they lose perspective – they focus on the tree, not the forest. While ensuring
team members know 'what' they need to achieve is vital, it's still more important
that they understand the 'why.'
 Rather than focus on the outcome, emphasize the impact you’re looking for.
Creating a culture of constant improvement is more important than creating more
business leads. Instead of "We need to increase the number of clients by X," try,
"We want to provide such a high-quality service that clients will not want to do
business with other companies than ours."
 Don't just tell your team what they need to achieve – be absolutely certain they
get the why. Define what success would look like and let people decide how to
achieve it.
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13.  In most companies, people ignore the trash on the floor, leaving it for someone else
to pick up.
 At Netflix, picking up the trash is a metaphor for taking care of problems, small
and large. The company doesn't have a rule to enforce it but rather promotes a
sense of ownership.
 Picking up the trash is a habit built naturally to prevent the "that's not my job"
excuse.
 Encourage discipline, not rules.
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14.  Netflix provides employees with lots of freedom, power, and information to make
decisions.
 In turn, it generates a sense of ownership and self-discipline. To avoid controlling
rules, Netflix trusts that employees have its best interests at heart. Whenever
there's an issue, they ask tough questions to make sure no one leaves the trash for
others to pick up:
1. Are expectations being clearly communicated or was misunderstanding a key cause of
this?
2. Is this problem created by an outlier who may not be a fit at Netflix?
3. Why would someone acting as a responsible adult do this?
 Reward collaboration, not individual goals – ownership is a collective mindset.
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15.  Managers often expect people to become more accountable without giving them
the power to make decisions. Distributing decision-making rights to those closest
to the work provides speed and, usually, better outcomes. Those in more proximity
to the 'client' or problem are better informed to make decisions.
 The Andon Cord is a concept that was vital to the Toyota Production System. It
consisted of a pull cord or button that any worker could activate to stop
production, prevent faulty cars, and fix the problem.
 Amazon has adopted the principle of the Andon Cord, giving support agents full
authority to "pull the cord" when they suspect a problem with the inventory. This
helps prevents issues from escalating.
 Delegating authority increases a sense of ownership – people take the outcome
more seriously. If you want people to own the consequences, let them own their
decisions.
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16.  Adding accountability does not always equal success.
 When Mailchimp added the notion of direct accountability to a measure for one of
their teams a few years back, team members chose work that drove the metric
they were accountable for – to the detriment of overall customer experience and
revenue. A classic example of perverse incentives.
 As John Foreman, Chief Product Officer at Mailchimp, wrote, "When you add
accountability to the movement of a measure, you do indeed 'get what you
measure.' But it often feels Shakespearean. You get what you measure, but what
you get is not what you wanted."
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17.  Mailchimp learned that it's better to focus on indirect accountability: Reward the
behaviors that help move the needle.
 Rather than checking if his team "moved the measure," Foreman recommends
asking:
1. What are the levers you have on the team for moving your measures?
2. Why did you think the work you just completed would move your measures?
3. Why do you think it did or didn't have the desired results?
4. What have you learned from that experience that will influence your next work?
5. Tell me why the work you've planned next, then, is it going to move your measures?
 Employees should own the behaviors that will move the metric – they should do
what's right, not just achieve a short-term target.
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19.  The difference between focusing on the project and the end product is ownership.
It encourages people to care about quality and outcome, not just deadlines or
milestones.
 Customer engagement platform Twilio organizes staff into small teams that own
the experience from end to end. As CEO Jeff Lawson explains, "Our teams are
defined by three things: the customer they're serving, the mission they're on in
service of that customer, and the metrics that tell us whether we're doing a good
job." This approach allows each team to take the ball and run with it.
 Leaders at Twilio strive to poke holes through the organization to increase
visibility across teams. For example, developers sit in on sales calls or occasionally
handle support tickets for their products.
 When people focus on the forest, not the tree, their sense of ownership increases.
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20.  When organizations give underperformers a pass, they reward a lack of
accountability. Even worse, they usually punish high-performers by giving them
more work to offset low performers' inefficiency.
 Fairness is crucial to promoting a sense of ownership within your team. If people
don't feel treated fairly – either because managers play favorites or give low
performers a pass – they will disengage or fight to get credit. This thus promotes
individuality.
 Prioritizing fairness at work helps overcome biases within accountability systems.
Studies show that managers tend to treat certain groups advantageously over
others. Fairness is about rewarding people for the outcome, not input such as
presenteeism or busyness.
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21.  When goals and metrics are defined by managers, they feel foreign. It's hard for
people to own something that "comes from the top" without being consulted.
Inviting people to help define the standards not only creates ownership: it also
removes the need to get buy-in.
 Hubert Joly, a former CEO of Best Buy, applied that principle to turn the dying
electronics retailer around. He asked store managers, "What does it look like
when we are at our best?" By encouraging employees to dream of a better future –
to define the standard for the company – Joly created a culture of collective
ownership.
 When people help set the bar, they feel more motivated to reach and exceed their
goals.
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23.  Accountability is important, but ownership creates a more profound impact.
 A culture of ownership replaces blame with questions. When things go wrong,
people focus on learning from it instead of pointing fingers.
 As a leader, showing genuine appreciation can go a long way in reinforcing
positive behaviors. Reward those who step up and go above and beyond. Avoid
giving a pass to those who don't care – this will send the wrong message to those
who do have a sense of ownership.
 Metrics matter. However, focusing on doing the right thing is more important.
Reward the behaviors that move the needle, not the people who are good at
beating the accountability system.
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