Accountability: One Throat to Choke or One Hand to Shake?

“Account­abil­i­ty breeds response-abil­i­ty.” — Stephen R. Cov­ey, author Sev­en Habits of High­ly Effec­tive People

To help peo­ple to under­stand the point of account­abil­i­ty, I’ve often used this phrase:

One Throat to Choke or One Hand to Shake

I said it in short form, in a recent meet­ing — just One Throat to Choke — when we talked about what hap­pens when we lack account­abil­i­ty, let the ball drop and then blame each oth­er. One of the exec­u­tives said he pre­ferred ​‘one hand to shake’ and the whole room start­ed laughing.

As we dis­cussed it, it was clear that that many peo­ple think of account­abil­i­ty as a con­se­quence or a neg­a­tive – as one throat to choke.

But in real­i­ty, there’s also a pos­i­tive side to account­abil­i­ty: peo­ple know that they own some­thing and then get a sense of sat­is­fac­tion when it’s been achieved. One hand to shake.

Or, as some­one said, one back to pat.

The most impor­tant thing is that, no mat­ter what, account­abil­i­ty must be clear in an orga­ni­za­tion or on a project so that peo­ple know who the point per­son is. Ide­al­ly, we then get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to shake one hand – or many – because when one per­son tru­ly has a sense of own­er­ship the whole team gets a chance to win.

“Hold every­body account­able? Ridicu­lous!” — Edwards Dem­ing, math­e­mat­i­cal physi­cist who inspired the rise of Japan’s eco­nom­ic post-war recovery.

The Chal­lenge

• Are you and your team clear about who is tru­ly account­able for key KPIs, projects or processes?

Spe­cial thanks to John Shea, Pres­i­dent, Pow­er and Main­te­nance, Mate­r­i­al Han­dling Services.