Whenever preventable crisis occurs, a common cause found by independent experts has been a systemic void of individual accountability absorbed into systems over time, inevitably resulting in demands for more accountability. As many managers have discovered, however, the path to achieving accountability can be long, frustrating, and in need of more effective tools.
Accountability is something many individuals and groups want everyone else to have, but often resist fiercely for themselves and their own entities. When examined in finer granularity, the avoidance of personal accountability is often sculpted over time by mysterious forces that include protectionism, lack of workforce preparedness, and a culture that rewards inappropriate behavior while creating obstacles for appropriate behavior; sometimes described as systemic "disincentives".
Disincentives (defined here as "incentives for doing the wrong thing") have become imbedded in organizational structures in an attempt to protect perceived interests, despite a history demonstrating that protectionism is at best a temporary substitute for structural integrity that supports superior performance. Resistance to progressive change may indeed be futile, but it has become a sophisticated art form nonetheless, representing a serious threat to future prosperity, particularly when considered within the proper context of global economics.
The avoidance of accountability is exemplified by resistance to change found in the incremental reform processes within enterprise architecture that attempts to serve all needs with identical products, thereby preventing differentiation, and reducing performance to the lowest common denominator. For example, scores of recent audits reveal that significant numbers of workers are using their computers, particularly via the Internet and Web, for everything but the mission of the organization, including engaging in part-time jobs, personal investments, online auctions, dating, personal shopping, gaming, and porn, among others.
Whether in the classroom or boardroom, some portion of personal activities may align with the mission, but the realization of potential found within existing technologies in achieving a mission-oriented learning organization is obviously falling well short of acceptable.
Effective leaders understand that accountability must be conjoined with authority, driven by incentives that align mutual interests, with performance measured and confirmed by accurate verification systems. In this regard, the virtual and real worlds are no different. Morale suffers and apathy rises when individuals are held accountable for issues unaccompanied by authority, with brain drain soon to follow. Accurate measurement revealed by rich reporting is necessary for mutual trust, which is a prerequisite for achieving true accountability, and now possible in the digital workplace environment.
In an earlier R&D phase of what has become Kyield, we determined that when essential links in the chain of enterprise architecture were damaged or missing, catastrophe has often been the result. The need for strong links, assured interoperability, and a total value substantially higher than the sum of the modules, together led us down the path to a holistic architectural design. The bulk of knowledge gained since that time has only served to confirm and clarify our understanding, resulting in very specific enterprise architecture designed to provide strong structural integrity and continual improvement. - MM
