"Accountability Is The Centre Of The Jig Saw Puzzle" Sandeep Kaul

In an insightful discussion about Accountability in the workplace, venerated Authors of the book ‘The Accountability Clock,’ Sandeep Kaul and Paramjit Singh presented tips to foster and build accountability in the workspace.  

1. Accountability as the centrepiece: 

By giving the example of a Jigsaw puzzle, Kaul compared accountability to the centrepiece around which the whole puzzle is built. "Lack of accountability leads to a gap between what your company is doing and what your company is capable of doing, and that is costing the business culture," said Kaul. 

2. Accountability and commitments:

While driving a relationship between commitments and accountability, Kaul differentiated between two types of commitment Tactical Commitments and Relational commitments. 

"Tactical commitments are about the tasks in hand like a project where else relational commitments are done with the people. Relational commitments are unspoken, they demonstrated by action more than speaking."  Relational commitments, he believes lead to setting up the right behaviour, automatically leading to productivity. 

3. Accountability contributes to the bottom line:

When the team does not waste time playing blame games and finding excuses the time can be well utilized towards progressing the business. He added, "Building an accountable culture leads to increased levels of employee engagement. Multiple studies show, when employee engagement increases their confidence about the future of the company increases, leading to innovation." 

He added, "Today, building an accountable culture at the workplace is not a choice anymore. It is an entry ticket for surviving and thriving in the current times."

4. Accountability as a clock: 

Describing the context between accountability and the metaphor of a clock, Paramjit Singh said, "Accountability in work culture has to be continuous, just like a clock. Even if we don't notice the watch, it keeps working just like how accountability should be flowing in the company. It's not an event to be captured, it's a continuous process." 

5. Individual and joint Accountability:

Explaining the correlation between the two, Singh says," accountability begins with self but, eventually in the organization it is the joint accountability which gets played. Joint accountability means when I am accountable to do something, it will have ramifications on others." 

Leaders need to be accountable to promote the overall development of the business.

6. The framework of accountability and its implementation:

As the clock has four quadrants, similarly he described the implementation of accountability in the firm using four steps: 

a) Observe: We need to find something which needs change or an error.

b) Ownership: Owning up to the issue or the change required. 

c) Fixing issues comes third. We need to delegate the task so that the anomaly gets fixed. 

d) Repeat the accountability culture. It should run through the organization like a clock every time and become a part of a broader culture in the organization.