Accountability

Written by Jason Haines

“I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second; a good word, and the third, a good deed.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

So many times, Lean practitioners hear and use the term accountability …  and how we must hold people accountable in what they are doing to sustain the program. But this accountability must first start with the choice of holding ourselves accountable to what we say and do as leaders. The buck starts with us to be able to hold ourselves accountable and comes with great responsibility and discipline. And within Lean and leadership we must start with ourselves and work our way out with accountability. So why do we need to begin with ourselves?

Like with many Lean and leadership principles, we must work on ourselves before guiding anyone around us and pushing for change in others. One of these changes is to hold ourselves accountable for the things that we are saying and doing. In Lean we start this by going to the Gemba, learning the processes, helping where needed, teaching, mentoring, learning, picking up trash, and much more. We have to always be the people that we say we will be and show our followers that we are willing to go the extra mile to help them become better, our organization become better, and ourselves become better.

What is accountability within the workplace and why is it important? Accountability in the workplace is about setting and holding people to a common expectation by clearly defining the organization’s mission, values, and goals. Accountability means holding each level of employee to a standard that will take the organization forward to be successful for the long term. Accountability is important for Lean and in the workplace because it helps build the organization in many ways. It helps build trust, teamwork, builds performance, and gets better compliance because no one wants to see the organization fail. This all starts with the Leaders in a Lean transformation.

So where do we begin our process of working on ourselves and holding ourselves accountable? The first area within Lean to start holding ourselves accountable is by taking ourselves to the Gemba with a purpose. That purpose must be going out and looking to learn from the people about their jobs and the processes. Go in depth in the why they perform in the process the way they do. We must look to learn all aspects of job and find ways to improve the process, and not blame the people. Also, while at the Gemba we must learn to be helpful, because I like other Lean practitioners, have found that when we go to the Gemba it is good to lend a hand any way we can be. It helps with two things when we are supportive: we gain respect of the people (or at least they get good chuckle watching us struggle doing their jobs) and it also provides a better understanding of the job that is being done.

Gaining a better understanding of the jobs is a very credible way for any Lean leader to show they are accountable for what is going on, but also a way to help them understand the struggles. To understand the struggles helps the leader to make proper changes, not firefighting changes, so we can explain why and what the modification will be without sound disingenuous and unknowledgeable about the jobs. When any leader doesn’t know exactly how a job is done or the current environment around the job it loses the respect of our people, while simultaneously we are not showing respect to those in the job. Respect for people is first in all parts of Lean.

The second area we can start to hold ourselves accountable is looking for opportunities to improve and change ourselves. I have said it many times we must work on ourselves to improve the world around us; if we don’t work on self-improvement, we are letting ourselves down. These improvements can come in many forms and help learn how to lead ourselves and what our strengths and weaknesses are. When we learn these strengths and weaknesses, we can start to learn to find our way of accountability. In the process of learning these things we are learning how to lead ourselves and moving the needle in our lives of making things better for us and around us. Once we know what we want and have a direction to go in we can understand how to hold ourselves accountable.

The third area of accountability is to be present while we are teaching, mentoring, and learning with the people leading in our organization. This is extremely important to Lean because the people we are developing want to know that we care, and we need to be present to show that we care about their development. Teaching people can be hard, but we are not always just teaching them we are also learning from them as well. This is another reason to hold ourselves accountable, to be present and in the moment, to answer any questions and provide the correct guidance. This is tough at times as leaders because we tend to not let go of things and allow people to fail forward throughout their time with the company. People go into business or the corporate world to push their organization forward and to do that we must learn to mentor and teach our people by letting them learn. Learning organizations are the most successful organizations.

The last area of accountability for any Lean practitioner or leader is to pick up the trash. Many great leaders you hear about today learned to do the little things great so that the large things will be easy to handle. They also hold themselves to that standard, or accountability to do the small things. When we do the small things, we can take care of the substantial things. This is done through developing and growing other people in the organization because we want them to succeed with our organizations. When we show our people to take care of the little things the amount of chaos in our organization is reduced, remember it won’t disappear, but it can be reduced. And a big way to reduce the chaos by holding ourselves to be accountable to the little things such as picking up the trash.

With Lean we take care of the little things with the tools of Lean, such as 5S, VSM, TPM, and many other mechanisms that help reduce the chaos in our business. These steps help to develop and grow our people. How does it do that, you may ask? The more we eliminate the chaos in any part of our lives the more time we gain because we do not have to worry about the small occurrences turning into large issues. Take care of the small things in your life, organize, don’t let matters you can’t control take control of you, and lastly don’t take the bait (as my wife always says). When we as leaders let trivial things take control of us, we lead by fear and control and not trust and accountability. This will not allow our people grow in the organization and we want them to grow, succeed, and mostly stay with us.

When our people see that we care they will care. So, go out and show your people you care and hold yourself accountable.

Helping grow your business through process improvement!!