The world is drying up. Yesterday we learned that the mighty Danube is so low that there is not enough water to cool nuclear power plants along its course. The day before, we were told that the drought in Central America is taking greater hold, causing problems in the Panama Canal. Much of the UK has been officially in a drought for several weeks. However, I thought rescue was on the way when I heard a water company director being interviewed on the radio.
He proudly announced that work should start soon on building a new massive reservoir in Oxfordshire. Whoopee, I thought. But the answer to the interviewer’s next question stopped me in my tracks. “When will it be delivering water to the system?” he asked. The director’s answer was “In 2040”. I thought I had misheard, but the radio presenter confirmed my thinking by asking why it takes 14 years to get water from a reservoir. The water company boss appeared to avoid answering the question.
I know it is complicated, but a reservoir is not much more than a big hole in the ground. Why does it take 14 years? You could ask the same for HS2, the UK’s new “high speed” train line. It will save travellers between London and Birmingham less time than they might queue in the buffet car for a coffee. Yet it will not be open to passengers until 2039, some 27 years after it was given the go-ahead. Compare that with the world’s longest road tunnel in Norway, which was built 30 years ago in less than five years.
The problem here is not bureaucratic Britain. Nor is it the time taken for legal challenges, nor “health and safety gone mad”. But beneath all those explanations lies another problem: accountability. Nobody, other than a journalist on the radio, seems to question why a reservoir takes 14 years to deliver some water. As a result, not a soul appears to be held accountable. Delays in the construction of HS2 are bound up in decisions made by groups of people and an array of committees, meaning that nobody is really accountable.
True, bosses often say “the buck stops with me”. But they are not really accountable for the plethora of small delays that ultimately create bottlenecks and hold-ups. The people really responsible have a boss who takes on the accountability and passes that to another boss who then becomes accountable to a manager up the line and so on. The result is that the person who ought to be accountable for delays and problems has passed that accountability to someone else who can’t actually deal with the difficulties causing the lengthy delays. The project is swimming in treacle.
You’ve probably worked out by now that I get annoyed by delays and problems for which people seem to have no accountability. “Nothing to do with me,” is the mantra in many workplaces. However, my level of irritation seems to be shared by many.
According to a recent Ipsos study of “digital authenticity”, a lack of accountability is a significant problem. The study showed that “human accountability” was required by 95% of people. However, only 56% of respondents felt brands achieved accountability. This 39% gap between expectations and experience was the biggest issue for brands, according to the study conducted for the software company, Sitecore. The study also found accuracy and honesty to be significant customer concerns. They do not always perceive honesty, with a 23% gap between expectations and reality.
The research shows that our customers want us to be honest and accountable for what we do. That should come as no surprise. What is concerning is the level of the gap between what customers want and what they experience. Customers do not always perceive businesses as entirely honest, and the accountability gap is even more striking. As businesses hand more decisions and customer interactions to AI, knowing which human is ultimately accountable becomes more important, not less.
Earlier this year, the Center for Creative Leadership explained how to create a culture of accountability. Managers of large infrastructure projects, in particular, might enjoy reading it. One element of increasing accountability, the article says, is allowing staff to experiment and innovate. Who knows, by doing that, they may discover how to dig a hole in the ground quicker than 14 years.
