Kammie Holder’s Swimming Upstream: The disease of evading accountability

Accountability and Offering Excuses for Excuses

by Kammie Holder

Most of our problems in life tend to come about as a result of trying to evade being accountable. It appears like a disease in the government, the private sector and in our personal lives. It’s just not an easy thing for some of us to accept accountability.

Accountability means we are responsible and answerable for our actions or inactions, thus the consequences must be accepted. Managers and leaders must accept accountability for the actions of others in their organization or on their team, just as they accept praise when the team does well.

In order to be accountable, we must also embrace the fundamental principle of integrity. It’s not always easy to do the right things, but we can save ourselves a whole lot of time and trouble if we invest a little more time to do things right the first time.

In communications with the late Prime Minister of Barbados David Thompson, he always reminded me to “Do what I think I have to do and what is always right.”

It’s also much more difficult to clean up a mess than to just simply avoid it.