I find it very valuable to distinguish Power from Strenght, as described in the "Finite and Infinite Games" book by James P. Carse. Strength is something I have and I develop. Power is something I give to others. For example, President has power because people gave it to him by election. My boss has power over me because I gave it to him by signing an employment contract.
An interesting conclusion in the book is that I want to develop more strength to be able to handle giving more power to others.
* What do you mean by extractive approaches. Is it similar to stopping cooperating (deflecting)?
* I struggle with the concept of accountability. It makes sense conceptually, but it the harder to exercise practically. We don't have many knobs to push the consequences of bad decisions, and they are rather dramatic (firing you, lousy performance review) and infrequent (once in your employment or once a year) to be helpful as a feedback loop. I feel that accountability is a farce as it only works when everyone has trust, and everyone has the same accountability framework that they use willingly and regularly. Can we make accountability work if we can't apply that consistently?
My opinion is that Accountability is about shaming and blaming. It might work in the short term but not the tool I want to rely on in my long-term relationships. I'm looking for evidence to disprove this point of view but unsuccessful so far. This post has not convinced me in opposite as well.
Late to the party - but maybe this pov works for you:
I first heard accountability described as Kent does on the Troubleshooting Agile podcast and then read about it in their book 'Agile Conversations'. To say it was an Aha! moment would be an understatement.
Accountability is and probably always will be wielded by some (or many) in the 'blame' sense. Few will 'hold someone accountable' for a successful release or whatever.
However, you can only change your own behaviour - and I find that openly rendering an account (of what I'm doing, how I'm spending budget, why I'm making decisions etc) 'disarms' the being held accountable (in the blame sense) up front.
Together with 'radiating intent' and being accountable (rendering an account as Kent describes it), everybody around me knows what is happening and why. If something 'goes wrong', can I still be 'held accountable'? Of course, I guess I could. It just doesn't usually happen.
It is very difficult to accuse someone of cheating when they've been playing with open cards the whole time.
Also, being accountable is something I'm doing mostly for myself - it's uncomfortable at first, but actually very freeing and much less uncomfortable than worrying about 'being found out' or 'being held accountable' later.
"being accountable is something I'm doing mostly for myself" - it's still based on shame and blame mindset. "I feel ashamed and blame myself for my blunders."
That's not my experience. I find that accountability reduces my experience of shame. When I'm not trying to hide anything, I'm less likely to do things that I want to hide. When I do something I feel bad about, revealing it voluntarily helps me feel clean sooner.
I feel like you're talking about transparency here. I'm not arguing against transparency. My question is, why do you use the term "accountability" instead of "transparency"? I don't see any benefits. It only causes confusion and increases the risk that people misunderstand you and misuse accountability in the way they understand it.
We might have to agree to disagree :) To me, blame and shame are retroactive. Being accountable the way Kent describes it, is proactive a lot of the time (at least for me). As an example, I would not just 'render an account' at the end of a big project (failed or not). I'm doing it all the time. Obviously at appropriate levels of detail and frequency depending on the audience.
I do agree that (self-)blaming is counterproductive. But I'm not doing that - I'm stating facts and being transparent - no shame involved.
I find it very valuable to distinguish Power from Strenght, as described in the "Finite and Infinite Games" book by James P. Carse. Strength is something I have and I develop. Power is something I give to others. For example, President has power because people gave it to him by election. My boss has power over me because I gave it to him by signing an employment contract.
An interesting conclusion in the book is that I want to develop more strength to be able to handle giving more power to others.
Thanks for the article! A couple of questions:
* What do you mean by extractive approaches. Is it similar to stopping cooperating (deflecting)?
* I struggle with the concept of accountability. It makes sense conceptually, but it the harder to exercise practically. We don't have many knobs to push the consequences of bad decisions, and they are rather dramatic (firing you, lousy performance review) and infrequent (once in your employment or once a year) to be helpful as a feedback loop. I feel that accountability is a farce as it only works when everyone has trust, and everyone has the same accountability framework that they use willingly and regularly. Can we make accountability work if we can't apply that consistently?
My opinion is that Accountability is about shaming and blaming. It might work in the short term but not the tool I want to rely on in my long-term relationships. I'm looking for evidence to disprove this point of view but unsuccessful so far. This post has not convinced me in opposite as well.
Late to the party - but maybe this pov works for you:
I first heard accountability described as Kent does on the Troubleshooting Agile podcast and then read about it in their book 'Agile Conversations'. To say it was an Aha! moment would be an understatement.
Accountability is and probably always will be wielded by some (or many) in the 'blame' sense. Few will 'hold someone accountable' for a successful release or whatever.
However, you can only change your own behaviour - and I find that openly rendering an account (of what I'm doing, how I'm spending budget, why I'm making decisions etc) 'disarms' the being held accountable (in the blame sense) up front.
Together with 'radiating intent' and being accountable (rendering an account as Kent describes it), everybody around me knows what is happening and why. If something 'goes wrong', can I still be 'held accountable'? Of course, I guess I could. It just doesn't usually happen.
It is very difficult to accuse someone of cheating when they've been playing with open cards the whole time.
Also, being accountable is something I'm doing mostly for myself - it's uncomfortable at first, but actually very freeing and much less uncomfortable than worrying about 'being found out' or 'being held accountable' later.
"being accountable is something I'm doing mostly for myself" - it's still based on shame and blame mindset. "I feel ashamed and blame myself for my blunders."
That's not my experience. I find that accountability reduces my experience of shame. When I'm not trying to hide anything, I'm less likely to do things that I want to hide. When I do something I feel bad about, revealing it voluntarily helps me feel clean sooner.
I feel like you're talking about transparency here. I'm not arguing against transparency. My question is, why do you use the term "accountability" instead of "transparency"? I don't see any benefits. It only causes confusion and increases the risk that people misunderstand you and misuse accountability in the way they understand it.
I have the same experience. It helps me make the right choice (not the easy one).
We might have to agree to disagree :) To me, blame and shame are retroactive. Being accountable the way Kent describes it, is proactive a lot of the time (at least for me). As an example, I would not just 'render an account' at the end of a big project (failed or not). I'm doing it all the time. Obviously at appropriate levels of detail and frequency depending on the audience.
I do agree that (self-)blaming is counterproductive. But I'm not doing that - I'm stating facts and being transparent - no shame involved.
"Blaming and self-blaming are counterproductive. It is always a system problem." - https://danlebrero.com/2022/03/09/cto-dairy-lessons-learned/