The CEO Code

Chapter 14

ACCOUNTABILITY

Accountability becomes real and empowering when you have written standards that directly relate personal performance to the goals of the organization. By achieving these work standards or exceeding them, the individual should understand how it would advance organizational goals. The individual also needs to know that the organization will reciprocate, with compensation or opportunity, to help him or her reach personal goals. When individual performance is linked directly to organizational results, motivation is both intense and self-initiated. As Thomas Huxley put it, “The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a foot long enough to put the other somewhat higher.”¹

If both parties agree on the ...