Transfer of accountability

Accountability creates freedom

I’ve written before about the benefits of working in a team when you’re stuck but there’s another reason teamwork is great: it allows the team to succeed or fail as a single unit.

Now, I don’t really believe in “failure” – it’s an oversimplification for the sake of this post – but what I mean by this is that when people work together as a team, individuals do not have to take the blame when unexpected things happen - the whole team makes progress or hits snags together.

Creating a blameless culture is much less likely to result in negative morale elements like shame or competitiveness.

Without blame, team members are much more likely to take risks – more likely to “move fast and break things”. Transferring accountability for their mistakes to you gives them freedom to work in the most efficient way without constantly looking over their shoulder worried that someone is going to judge them for making mistakes.

How to transfer accountability up to you

Of course, there still has to be accountability - and that is the job of the leader. When things go wrong, it is the leader who has to make the appropriate arrangements to recover from the hiccup.

In many ways this is the primary responsibility of leaders: to protect their team from blame and criticism by ensuring they take accountability when the team mis-steps.

The usual way to do this is with a combination of guardrails and risk mitigation. Then if something unexpected happens, it is easier to recover from it.

A guardrail is a way to ensure that if someone makes a mistake, the damage is minimal. A real example might be ensuring that all development and testing happens on airgapped containers with dummy data, to minimise the risk of experimentation and innovation damaging a production system or leaking customer data. And of course there’s no better guardrail in a tech team than automated testing.

And a mitigation is something anyone who has done a risk register (future blog post alert!) will be familiar with: it’s a plan for what actually happens when a risk materialises. A really key one here is to plan for sickness – no member of your team should ever feel they’re letting the side down if they take a few days off sick. You should always have a plan for what happens when any individual member of your team is sick even during a critical time.

I like to remind leaders of the simple fact that this transferred accountability is the reason they earn more money. You don’t provide more value but there is more risk associated with you getting something wrong.

And when risks do materialise, like a team member being unexpectedly off sick, it is your responsibility as a leader to ensure the mitigation is carried out, so that team member never feels guilty or ashamed.

And up beyond you, too

If taking on responsibility for everyone else’s mistakes sounds scary, remember that – unless you are the chief executive – there is probably someone above you who earns more than you do, and (in theory at least) operates within the same accountability framework you do.

As a leader, it’s important to accept accountability for your team’s actions, but that’s not the same as accountability for the overall outcome. Your team is just one part of a larger organisation, and you can advocate for a work environment where you are able to transfer accountability for bigger risks that are literally “above your pay grade”.

If your line manager tries to make you accountable for something beyond your immediate scope, they are potentially violating the trust given to them at their level in the organisation. Maybe point them at this blog post as a little reminder about why they earn more money than you?

When team members can be at fault

Of course, creating a blame-free culture is not the same as allowing team members to get away with anything.

There are some things that individual team members should feel personal responsibility for and can’t transfer their accountability up the chain.

These include:

• Misconduct - when an employee intentionally acts in a deceptive or deceitful way, to cover up a secret or take advantage of a loophole or security flaw.
• Bullying - any time a team member acts in a way that is designed to cause a negative emotional response in another team member or in an “accidental” way that is not prioiritising inclusion of team members who are marginalised in any way, including something as small as a “mean code review comment”. All team members should feel equally and individually responsible for professional and constructive behaviour.
• Opacity - this is when team members refuse to give you a status report or intentionally obfuscate it. This results in a watermelon and can make accountability and risk management more difficult.

The last one is one to keep an eye on. If team members are intentionally keeping their performance from you, they might be fearful of repercussions for their mistakes. This could mean your team culture isn’t as blameless as you expected or that you haven’t been adequately communicating your transfer of accountability to your team members.

Do you agree?

What do you think? If you are a leader, do you practise a blame-free culture in your team?

If you don’t, what do you see are the benefits of your approach? I appreciate this isn’t the only way to do things, so I’m interested in hearing from people who prefer an individual responsibility approach.

And if you work in a team where people do take more individual responsibility, what is the reason your leaders are paid more than the people they manage (if they are)?

Or do you agree strongly and work in a place where this could be improved? Would you like some adivce on how you might be able to nudge your team in this direction? Get in touch with me! I’m interested in every new contact, even if there’s no way for it to lead to business for me.