We Need a Culture of Accountability

It's impossible for our team to be truly invested in the outcomes of success (or failure) without defined lines of accountability. [View this email in your browser]( • [Forward to a Friend]( We Need a Culture of Accountability TL;DR: "Why don't I feel like the rest of the staff feels as accountable for our success or failure as I do? Is there something I could be doing differently that would give people more ownership over the outcome of their individual contributions?" When things are going well, everyone wants to take credit. When things are going poorly, everyone wants to point a finger elsewhere. While startups don't have any monopoly on finger pointing and blame shifting in an organization, we deal with this way more as startup Founders because let's face it, stuff goes wrong all the time! But if we know going in that problems are going to be rampant, it's as important as ever to build a culture of accountability in our startups so that everyone is 100% focused on driving outcomes. Today’s Advice Sponsored by [Mabl]( Accountability Drives Motivation It's impossible for our team to be truly invested in the outcomes of success (or failure) if we don't believe we're accountable. As an employee, if I work really hard, or very little, and I get the same paycheck, what's my real motivation for working any harder? Our startups are powered by motivation, mostly because we're nowhere near "maintenance mode" which most large corporations are. We need our team to be willing to run through walls to achieve the impossible, but if those same individuals don't really feel connected and accountable for the effort, it's hard to believe they are going to be truly motivated. Conversely, if we sit down with someone and say "You own this — the success or failure is 100% on your shoulders." then we're way more likely to see someone truly care about the outcome. While money is a motivator, so is personal pride, and that comes with ownership. Ownership and Consequence The two hallmarks of accountability are "ownership" and "consequence." We need to have both in order for accountability to matter. Ownership means that if something goes wrong, we own it — we don't point to someone else. Consequence means if something goes wrong, we bear the cost of that mistake. If we foster a culture without ownership or accountability, then we're directly taking away the foundations of responsibility across the organization. The last thing we want is a startup where no one feels particularly tied to outcomes and whatever happens just sort of happens. We can change that by giving everyone ownership and by way of that consequence. Consequence doesn't have to inherently be "punishment" by the way, it can also signal reward. The point is that whatever the outcome, the person in charge of it owns it. It Starts With Us There's no way to build this culture of accountability if we don't practice it ourselves. If we're constantly coming up with excuses or shifting blame for things going bad to someone or something else — we'll never establish this culture. As Founders, we're inherently accountable for the fact that our whole lives are often leveraged on this one startup, but that doesn't mean we're automatically acting accountable. We easily default to "Oh, we couldn't raise money" or "That person we hired didn't perform" as if it's some external event that we had no input on. Every event in a startup, good or bad, is our fault — period. If we couldn't raise capital, that was our lack of ability to fundraise. If the markets tanked and less capital was available then it's our fault for not building a path to revenue and sustainability. While many external factors always exist, accountability always lands with us. As with so many aspects of leadership, the culture of accountability is directly reflective of our own accountability. If we own up to all of our outcomes, we pave the way for the rest of the organization to do the same, and ideally, do it well. [Read This Article Again Here]( Free Guide: Modern testing strategies for software teams Software teams, particularly those that have adopted Agile or DevOps practices, are delivering product updates to their customers faster than ever before. As a result, the [demand for more testing]( has grown exponentially. Quality teams are under extraordinary pressure to perform an adequate amount of in-sprint testing to ensure their applications are [meeting customer expectations]( without slowing down release cycles. Mabl’s low-code test automation enables entire software teams to contribute to quality. Everyone — regardless of automation experience — can create, execute, and maintain automated tests. Start creating UI and API tests in [Mabl, free for 14 days.]( In Case You Missed It [How To Write A Business Plan: A Comprehensive Guide]( A step-by-step guide on writing a business plan to catch an investor's attention & serve as a guiding star for your business. [We Are NOT Our Startups (podcast)]( Being a Founder can be all-encompassing. We give everything we have to our startup, so how do we NOT attach our self-worth to its performance? [How Do I Design My Startup Around My Life?]( There’s very little preventing us from designing our startups around our life goals. It starts with us being very clear about what we want to achieve and then taking clear, small steps toward those outcomes. Love this topic? Hate it? Let's chat on social media! Wil Schroter Founder & CEO @ Startups.com [Share]( [Share]( [Tweet]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( [Forward]( Copyright © 2022 Startups.com, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you joined Startups.com. Our mailing address is: Startups.com 1201 Dublin RoadColumbus, OH 43215 [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](.