Accountability vs. Ownership

Over the last two months, several of you have asked about getting people to “own it” in the stores. This desire for people to “own it” varies at every level depending on who I’m talking with or about what, and this conversation has occurred at nearly every level.

The conversation often goes something like:

Leader: I need my people to just own it.

JR: What do you mean by own it? Define own it for me.

Leader: You know, I want them to have accountability when I’m not there.

JR: Accountability and Ownership are two different things…accountability is part of ownership but ownership is not part of accountability. Do you want this to be a negative experience or a positive experience for them?

Leader: I want it to be positive, they need to be proud of what they are doing and step up to fix the negative things; to take control of what’s happening without constant interaction with me.

First Things First: Definitions…

For the purposes of this message:

Ownership is an intangible feeling or certain intrinsic motivator to take responsibility for something larger than yourself, regardless of actual legal ownership.

Accountability is an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.

Note the word RESPONSIBILITY is in both definitions, responsibility is defined as:

1. the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone.

2. the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something.

3. the opportunity or ability to act independently and make decisions without authorization.

Using the definitions of responsibility; the people in this conversation are seeking #3, but we most often cultivate #2 at best we land on #1.

Accountability is something we inherently cast upon people and expect as part of employment, and rightly so. In order to be a productive member of an organization or even society, every person must hold some level of accountability for their actions and the work they perform; accountability is a good thing for our society. However, at its heart accountability has a negative connotation and begs for the opportunity to lay blame or criticism on someone. People may accept accountability but you will be hard pressed to find someone who actively seeks it out. Just think about the statement that we all use or have used at some point…“We need to hold people more accountable”…there is absolutely nothing positive about that statement. But, when talk turns to wanting someone to take ownership, we mean it in a positive way, and it is most often received in a positive way. Unfortunately, we say ownership but, we have a tendency to cultivate accountability. So, how do we get to ownership?

The two are semi-exclusive: I believe accountability is exclusive of ownership but ownership is not exclusive of accountability. Meaning, you can be held accountable for something without the feeling of ownership over the process. However, if you are in a culture that fosters ownership and feel that intrinsic motivator, you inherently take accountability as part of the ownership. When you own a patch, a store, a shift, or a project, it includes accountability to teammates, other teams, customers, yourself, management, and the institution. We expect some blame, corrections, and criticism, but we also expect autonomy and support (note two of three requirements for self-determination; competence should already exist at some level before ownership).

You cannot require ownership. You cannot make someone take ownership. People must choose ownership. However, you can foster a culture that promotes or breeds ownership. Those cultural qualities include challenges, connection/love, autonomy/choice, purpose, and meaning. Remember, ownership in our definition is intrinsic and intrinsic is key to the next paragraph.

The question I posed three paragraphs ago: how to get to ownership without constantly seeking accountability? Stop Inspecting and Start Expecting!**

Too often we find ourselves inspecting what others are doing. Inspecting is a compulsory action to ensure compliance; this is an extrinsic motivator. People will perform the task to avoid failure of the task. Inspecting to ensure compliance or completeness will take your entire day and then some; it is enormously time consuming. Then, what happens when the inspector (you) is not there to conduct inspections?

On the Other Hand

When we create a culture of expecting things, people perform tasks because its what’s expected. They begin to build that sense of ownership and “do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do”. Ownership has a positive connotation and people want that level of autonomy regardless of what level it’s at; i.e. fryer, drive-thru, kitchen, scheduling, paperwork, crew management, etc. Ownership is multiple things, at multiple times, for multiple people, (sounds similar to culture: 1000 things by a 1000 people over a 1000 days) not just a Department Manager overseeing the store while the GM is away. Get your teams to do things because they want to. Expecting takes a lot of front loading and can be time consuming, but a lot less time consuming than overseeing every detail yourself or worse yet, inspecting all the time.

Accountability happens so long as there is someone for inspections.

Ownership happens so long as the culture fosters expectations.