From Responsibility to Accountability

May 14, 2009 in Church with 0 Comments

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfiupublicradio/

It really does not matter where you come from; church, non-profit, corporate or even small business. The people under you or the people that follow you will only take the initiative or go the extra mile if they have a stake in the matter. Most people are willing to take responsibility for something; they will be keen to do something for some form of benefit be it pay or recognition, but the non-delivery or non-completion of a task will not is not an issue because there is no ownership. When you have ownership you are at least accountable to yourself to complete the task as successfully as you can.

This will be a win for me in the next year

Can I walk away from what I do, knowing full well that I am not important, that I am not not major cog in the wheel? Can I walk away and know that I can hand over something that can run smoothly without me. This is my goal this year, this is a win that I want within a year. But I know that to see this happen I need to shed some accountability and let others take ownership. not easy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/designsquid/

I am a volunteer, I work with many other volunteers, we all put in lots of effort. We also hear the call or more effort and more commitment. Hell, I hear it at work place in the form of a productivity talk in every weekly developers meeting.

Ownership (or at least custodianship) brings accountability. I would like to see every volunteer at our church feel that they are accountable in their roles, but you can’t bring that about by preaching fear and the consequences of failed accountability. I think that you can bring it about by first of all being an example and second by offering ownership as an opportunity. For example in the video team I do a lot of the editing and I take all the initiative, but that is because I horde the ownership of the tasks; I need to let go a few things and share the ownership.

So starting next month I will start sowing the seeds and talking about it. With the aim of handing over this here MacBook Pro that belongs to the church in any case and reverting back to my old 1,6GHz SP G5; shop and horror. If that’s what it takes to get it done then so be it. This is going to take a bit of letting go in order to empower the team.

Anything that you have to let go for the bigger picture?