How to drive performance without playing the blame game

In today’s turbulent economic climate, there’s an intense pressure to perform. Organizations are exploring new business models and ways of working to accelerate growth and stay competitive. Boards and shareholders demand results, which pushes leadership teams to dial up their expectations. The term “accountability” has become a buzzword in discussions, but far too many misunderstand and misapply it.

When leaders talk about creating a culture of accountability, they often rely on “shame and blame” tactics. This approach might seem effective in the short term, but it ultimately undermines the culture leaders seek to build. Instead of motivating individuals to do more, it drives people to hide from responsibility.

Redefining accountability

The challenge is redefining accountability. How do you set clear, high-performance expectations and hold people to them without sliding into the counterproductive cycle of shaming and blaming? To create a culture of accountability that truly enhances performance, leaders need to think about accountability differently. That means moving away from coercion and blame to mutual responsibility and ownership, which empowers individuals to own their roles and contribute to the team’s success.

Consider the case of a manufacturing company I worked with. Facing stiff competition and the need to innovate quickly, the company’s executive team realized that the old ways of operating were no longer sufficient. Its traditional approach to accountability was stifling innovation and preventing the company from adapting to new market realities. The culture had to change from blame-focused to one where everyone—from the top down—felt invested in the company’s success and comfortable owning both their wins and their mistakes.

Leadership needed to break down accountability into the distinct behaviors they wanted to see: identifying the issues, claiming the issues as your own, and changing the outcomes. This approach made the change real and enabled leaders to work collaboratively to implement the new culture. Here’s how:

1. Identify the issues: proactively ask for understanding

The first step to building accountability in the company was for leaders to help their teams see issues before they escalate. They brought this to life through scaled leader sprints, which were focused, short-term initiatives designed to instill key habits across the organization. This practice encouraged leaders to seek feedback from their teams and peers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and transparency when team members felt safe to speak up.

Leaders also practiced how to pause before reacting to bad news. The simple act of taking a moment to consider the best response helped them approach problems with a clear mind, avoiding knee-jerk reactions that might discourage team members from raising concerns.

Lastly, this practice also taught leaders to invite perspectives by asking, “How do you see it?” rather than the more typical “What do you think?” This promoted open dialogue and the consideration of multiple viewpoints to understand the same problem. By cultivating these habits, the company’s leaders focused more on inquiry, shifting active problem-solving to a collaborative process with the team.

2. Claim the issues as your own: embrace the outcomes

The second part of accountability for the company was about taking actions that delivered the most critical business outcomes. The company needed to train leaders to prioritize initiatives that had the highest impact on these goals, avoiding the trap of rewarding “busy work” that appeared productive but didn’t contribute to organizational objectives.

Leaders practiced skills to evaluate their initiatives to concentrate on high-leverage actions—those that would generate the most significant results with the least amount of wasted effort. That means setting the example of refocusing themselves on impactful actions (while stopping those that were mere activity) and then deliberately taking time in team meetings to review and reassess priorities. As a result, the leaders were able to develop a new muscle in themselves and their teams. The clarity on prioritizing the right actions over simply working harder energized the organization to continue to make the change.  

3. Change the outcomes: measure and adapt

The company focused on evolving its key performance metrics to support these new priority outcomes. Leadership realized that if they tried to change behavior, yet continued to measure the same old actions, the change wouldn’t stick. The company also needed to shift these key performance metrics to reflect what’s more important or impactful as business priorities evolved, which required more flexibility and transparency from the leaders.

In this phase, the leaders moved to create a new dashboard, identifying the core metrics they were trying to accomplish that would tell them if they were moving the needle in response to competitive threats. They agreed to review the data quarterly and share what they learned with the organization. When the metrics moved in the right direction, there was a public celebration of the progress. And perhaps more importantly, when they didn’t, the leaders engaged their teams in ideating how to adapt their actions—and what they were measuring—rather than placing blame.   

The new habits practiced in these three phases created visible early momentum, as the aura of “shame and blame” noticeably lifted. One team, for example, reduced the time that it took to get product updates to market. Their rapid prototyping test-review-fail program allowed them to experiment quickly, share learnings at weekly meetings, and fail without fear of reprisal. By shifting away from traditional views of accountability and embracing a more collaborative and trust-based approach, you can help your team achieve the high performance that current market conditions demand.

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