Accountability vs Responsibility

There’s this weird conversation I see a lot – people drawing distinctions between responsibility and accountability in painful detail.

It seems to boil down to a few ideas…

Responsibility:

If you’re responsible for a thing, say “closing more deals”, then being responsible for it means you’re the person (or team) tasked with doing the work of closing more deals. If it’s “getting the creative for the next ad campaign to the media team”, you’re the person or team tasked with doing that work. Very task focused – simple enough.

Accountability, however:

Falls to the person who’s ultimately answerable to whether that work actually gets done or not.

If you manage a sales team, you own the results. If you manage a creative team, you own whether the deadline is met. Accountability is not task focused, it’s results focused.

The most likely reason I called this conversation ‘weird’ is because a soloist, it makes no difference.

You’re both responsible for the tasks and accountable to the result.

So a big question: Who actually HOLDS you accountable?

In my mind, this is a much juicier topic.

Of course, you hold yourself accountable. Because you’re a professional who’s proud of what you’ve built, take pride in doing your thing, and fully intend on hitting the goals you’ve set for yourself…

If you’re organised, highly motivated, great at avoiding distractions, and hitting your goals more often than not, you’ve got accountability on auto-pilot 👍

If not, you’re probably feeling a little seen right now. Everything has that extra layer of “hard” when it’s just you.

How to find accountability

There are a bunch of ways, from very crude and simple, to more complex:

• Reminders and automation can help by simply reminding you of the goal you set
• Habit trackers and tracking your ‘streaks’ can help if you’re that type of person
• An accountability partner is a popular option among self-employed folks – find someone to share goals with, and check in on each other (more on this below)
• An accountability coach is a dedicated pro who will help you figure out your goals, track your progress, nudge you with reminders, and get you back on track when your results start slipping

My brother, sister and I have a WhatsApp group together where we essentially act as each others’ accountability partners – every Monday we share 3 things we want to achieve that week, plus a reward and a punishment. If we achieve all 3, we get the reward. If we achieve zero, we get the punishment. The minimum for a “pass” is hitting 1 of the 3 goals (no reward or punishment). It’s super simple, and it works really well.

The coaches in my gym often run challenges for us to lose weight, build muscle, or whatever our goals are. They do the “coach” version of this, where they help us set habits, get us to send photos/step counts/calories consumed etc, and adjust our strategy to ensure we stay on track with our goal. If I slip up, I genuinely feel like I’m letting them down.

For business clients, I offer the coach version of this too – we set goals together, I hound them a few times a month, or week (or for the really motivated – daily) and ensure they stay on track with their goals.

I often seek out accountability partners or coaches for myself depending on the goals I’m trying to hit.

For smaller life goals, the partner model works really well for me (with my bro and sis).

For bigger health or business goals, I go to the pros who know how to bring me back on track when I slide off, because they’ve seen it before.

It all depends on the goal.

I bet you can think of one person who’d love to be an accountability partner with you. Steal the outline I use with my bro and sis above, and suggest it to them. It’s one of the best things we’ve done as siblings – the goals are set on Monday, but the banter and sledging carries on all week. We’re in touch more now than we’ve ever been.

Otherwise if you or a friend have got bigger business goals, my accountability coaching The Business Hound (because I hound you relentlessly until you hit your goals 😂) currently has spaces open.

These are some folks I coached recently, and their results:

• Dave, an independent app developer, streamlined his solo operations and increased his project rate on average to 7x within 12 months (I coached him for the first 3 months)
• Rebecca finally backed her artistic abilities and became a published children’s book illustrator, after spending (wasting) years in admin roles

If you’re the type of person who benefits from an outside nudge (🙋🏻‍♂️), hit the Business Hound link above, and shoot me any questions you have ✌️