The BBC is currently in a bit of hot water. It is facing a $1 billion lawsuit threat from President Trump. He dislikes media outlets that say negative things about him. A rather stupid, lazy and crass edit by the makers of the programme, Panorama, seems to have suggested that the President had incited insurrection after he lost the election to Joe Biden. Oh, hang on, that’s what he faced impeachment for. Never mind. Let’s move on..!
A key question that I am sure is being asked by journalists and programme makers across the world is how on earth did such a poor edit make it all the way to broadcast? The answer to that probably lies in the way organisations deal with the concepts of “accountability” and “responsibility”.
The Director General of the BBC and the head of the BBC news output have both resigned on the basis that they are “responsible”. That’s palpable nonsense, of course. How can the “DG” be responsible for something that he was not involved with, did not know about, and had no hand in doing?
Meanwhile, the person who did that ludicrous edit has probably fulfilled their role by being “accountable”. These days, “accountability” means you can demonstrate you have followed the “process” and that you have “documented” each step you have taken. All you need to show is that you have done what is asked, followed the right processes, and that then means you have been “accountable”.
I witnessed this firsthand in a meeting with a client a few years ago. Two teams were working jointly on a project and needed to plan for some changes to be implemented in the future. One of the managers asked about the “paperwork”. She wanted to be reassured that there would be some kind of “audit trail” of decisions and that there would be a “process” for making the required changes. I had my head in my hands, metaphorically, of course, thinking about the extra bureaucracy that this would create and the time delays that would happen. I wanted to say, “Surely, as the manager, you make the decisions because that’s what you are responsible for?” She wanted to be accountable, but not responsible.
We saw this earlier in the week in the UK when the review into the Sara Sharif case revealed several failings. Sara was 10 years old when her father and her stepmother brutally murdered her. The review of the case found that social services and others had significant weaknesses, including the error of visiting the wrong house to check on Sara following concerns expressed about her welfare. How do we know this happened? Because of “accountability”. The processes and associated documentation of what took place reveal the mistake. The people who went to the wrong home have “accounted” for what happened. The person taking “responsibility” is the boss of the local council, who would have had no idea what was going on.
Business leaders often say “the buck stops with me”. “I’m the person at the top, so I must take responsibility.” It sounds good, but it is nonsense.
By removing responsibility from the people who are actually doing the work, it means we end up with an “audit trail of accountability”. We can account for what happened. We can explain what went wrong. But the person who made the mistake or did the wrong thing just carries on with their job. Meanwhile, the person “at the top” has to quit, “taking responsibility” when they had no involvement.
So, why don’t people lower down the organisational hierarchy take responsibility for their actions? Because leaders have taken that option away from them. We live in a world where workers have limited autonomy, where everything is documented, and where individuals have less control. This inevitably leads them to think, when things go wrong, “nothing to do with me, it’s the system”. They account for their actions, but pass the responsibility up the line. In theory, responsibility is about the task, and accountability is about answering for the result. However, in our modern, risk-averse businesses, accountability has been downgraded to merely documenting the process.
Is it time for this to stop? Is it time to rethink management by empowering staff to be more autonomous and making them responsible for their actions? At least more bosses would keep their jobs.
