Is It Innovation Or Accountability?

This week Apple reached 25 billion downloads from its App Store - three apps for each person on Earth. Apple says they are, "Creating jobs through innovation. Throughout our history, Apple has created entirely new products — and entirely new industries — by focusing on innovation. As a result, we’ve created or supported more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers: from the engineer who helped invent the iPad to the delivery person who brings it to your door."

INNOVATION

“Innovation is what America has always been about,” President Obama remarked in his recent State of the Union address. It’s hard to disagree, isn’t it? We live in a world dominated by innovative American companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook. And even in the face of a recession, Silicon Valley’s relentless entrepreneurs have continued to churn out start-up companies with outsize, world-changing ambitions.”

ACCOUNTABILITY

Accountability and Integrity are keys to a sound, successful Culture. “People hear accountability and they think someone’s going to the wood shed, nothing is further from the truth. Accountability includes trust, communications, training and responsibility.” Trust is a state of obligation; it includes both a confidence and a reliance on good qualities of fairness, truth, honor and ability.

Consider these points in a path to an accountable successful culture:

• Engaged Ownership
• Strategic Leadership
• Clear authority and responsibility
• Shared ethics and values
• Transparency

Quality issues affect the customer. We all must remember the next person in the chain is the customer. This month there is not a group, Leadership included that did not let their customers down. When we fail to provide internal needs, we’ll fail the external customers too!

‘No problem can be solved
by the same consciousness that created it.
We need to see the world anew.’
– Albert Einstein

Accountability has its roots is performance improvement. A few keys to performance improvement include:

• Maintain or enhance the other persons self esteem.
• Ask for help in solving , understanding the problem
• Listen and respond with empathy
• Remember there are two sides to report cards
• Quality or Quantity issues require the company to do something- we may have training, tooling issues; we may have wrong person on wrong job… 99% of the time quality or quantity the company must help solve.
• Behavior- only team member can solve- we cannot get them up on time…behavior issues only the individual call fix!
• Follow-up

Is creating or re-starting a habit of accountability hard? What are the steps we need to take to make Habits stick?

Shawn Parr of Bulldog Drummond, recently blogged about not letting culture scuttle your strategy. People matter. Customers, shareholders and teammates are all people. Poor quality scuttles growth. Culture, strategy are linked by performance. Every society, company has a culture. Every culture is not healthy.

Part of strategy is to make the culture focused. Part of the strategy is the rules, accountability. Part of the culture is the passion with which we enforce the rules. Safety, Quality, Housekeeping and Preventive Maintenance must be our Passion. Strategy is the imperative that makes the difference, culture is the zeal, enthusiasm that makes us different.

Let’s make March a great month, lets communicate! Email is not the only tool. Let’s make each other a success.