Hold Their Feet to the Fire

Accountability

We spend a lot of time talking about accountability and responsibility. If you google “Accountability versus Responsibility” you will get at least 51 million hits. 

Most of them tell you that you can’t manage people if you aren’t clear about accountabilities and responsibilities. (Please don’t ask if I have looked at all 51 million, it will go badly for me).

Not everybody is quite so hung up

The German translation of accountability is verantwortlich, so is the translation of responsibility.  In Dutch they both translate to verantwoordelijk.  To the Germans and Dutch there is no difference between the two concepts.

You can say what you like about our European neighbours, but they are not commercially or organisationally naive. 

Is the distinction as helpful as we think?

So what is the difference?

The easiest way to explain it is that in your job you are responsible for something and accountable to somebody.  Or to put it another way, you are accountable to the people above you and responsible for those below you.

There is more to it than definition

It is easy to package something up and hold somebody accountable…

• You can hold a Doctor accountable for a treatment
• You can hold a Chief Executive accountable for a hospital
• You can hold the Health Secretary accountable for the health service

Accountability is easy.

Responsibility is much harder to define.  If you have ever written a job description you will know what I mean.  Responsibilities are complex and unclear.  Think of the balance of requirements, processes, egos, customers and suppliers in your job.

It is easy to hold somebody accountable.  It is far harder to detail their responsibilities.

Hold their feet to the fire

Some say that you should hold your employees feet to the fire, be very clear about their accountabilities and let them get on with it. But isn’t that just bad management?

• It is simplistic: holding somebody totally accountable in our interconnected world is impossible. There are always multiple people and agendas involved.
• It is threatening: people only look for accountability when they want to find somebody to blame.

Simplistic threatening management will never end well.

Can you really hold somebody accountable and penalise them if you don’t understand the immense complexity of what they are responsible for?

Instead of casting blame, maybe you’d be better off trying to understand.

If you hold people’s feet to the fire you will just end up with a lot of burnt feet

Anon

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Photo by How-Soon Ngu on Unsplash