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ROT092
Where does accountability start? It starts with you, as
soon as you open your mouth for the purpose of voicing a word.
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by Mihnea Moldoveanu
No
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The Promise:
The Basic Building
Block of
Accountability
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ACCOUNTABILITY HAS BECOME a major buzzword of late, cited to be at
the core of market meltdowns and revivals, and one of the basic
buildings blocks of successful businesses. As a result, it has become
a topic of investigation by a large coterie of consultants, social scientists and practitioners. Break the riddle of accountability, the
thinking goes, and you will have solved one of the thorniest issues
in modern business.
In spite of the intellectual cornucopia developing around
accountability – from pay-for-performance to management by
objectives to self-discovery and ‘empowerment’ in its various guises – we are no closer to solving the fundamental problem than we
were when Plato transcribed Socrates’ sallies in the Agora. This,
I argue, is because most of the proposed approaches focus narrowly on tasks, responsibilities, personal attributes and measurement
systems – all of which are important aspects of accountability, but
overlook its most important features: its relationality, reflexivity
and relativity.
Accountability is relational in that it involves a promise or commitment from me to you; it is reflexive in that it says something
about me and about our relationship that I have to internalize and
accept; and it is relative to a set of background assumptions and a
background audience – made up of those who can witness my commitment to you and those who cannot, but could.
The I-Thou Interaction
The basic building block of accountability is an act so complex
that only humans can commit it: the promise. A promise is a
speech act that is much more than just oral noise: it is oral noise
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Those
(hypothetical)
Them
(not present)
Behavioural
I
Visceral
Affective
Discursive
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They
(present)
Thou
Behavioural
Visceral
Affective
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Planes of
being toward
or being with
Discursive
that binds one to a course of action. The analysis of accountability proposed here focuses squarely on this speech act as the most
important feature of organizational life, and on the promise as the
basic building block of accountability.
When am I accountable? I am accountable to you for carrying
out some action to which I have committed by promising to carry
it out. We should not confuse being accountable with being
responsible. Accountability is broader: it envisions that I may not
fulfill the promise but, in that case, it demands that I produce a
satisfactory account of why I have not. How we handle broken
promises is every bit as important to the quality of a culture as is
the raw score of kept vs. unkept promises.
The basic unit of analysis of a promise is ‘the I-Thou interaction’, which unfolds on four distinct planes:
1. Behavioural: which behaviours, including verbal behaviours,
do we produce toward each other when I make the promise and
you accept it?
2. Affective: what sentiments or feelings do we feel and express
towards each other when I make the promise and you accept it?
3. Visceral: what raw feels and sensations do I express and understand you to express when I make a promise and you accept it?
4. Discursive: what thoughts and beliefs do I express and understand you to express in the context of the interaction? What
reasons and arguments do we put forth towards each other?
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Figure One
The I-Thou-They-Them-Those Universe
Promises work on all four planes simultaneously. If I promise to
deliver a document to you by tomorrow at 5 pm, but I do so with
a snicker that belies my commitment, you will have reason to
doubt my words. If you show this doubt to me, I have reason to
doubt that you accepted my promise, and may feel ‘freed’ in some
way from carrying it out. If I promise to release the quarterly
earnings on time, but display mockery and disgust at the theatricality of the whole interaction with shareholders, analysts and
pundits, then you have reason to doubt my authenticity and the
veracity of my promise. You may even proceed to create your own
earnings report, just in case I fail to fulfill my promise, leaving me
feeling betrayed when I do produce the report.
The Role of ‘The Others’
Within organizations, the ‘I-Thou dyad’ described above does
not live in a vacuum. It is embedded inside three additional layers of interactions, which are ordered according to immediacy
and directness:
• They comprises the people that are direct witnesses to my
promise, providing an audience and a forum for resolving disputes. They could be the members of an executive team, a board
of directors or a product design team who all have direct access
to the speech act that gave rise to the promise;
• Them comprises those that are known to both parties, are not
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The Promise Itself
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The stage is now set for us to analyze the promise itself. The
four planes of an interaction described above allow us to consider typical accountability episodes in a unified fashion, by examining the varied promises, reasons, sentiments and beliefs that
exist on the ‘stage’ on which the I-Thou interaction unfolds, and
who comprises They, Them and Those in the forms of audiences,
arbiters and adjudicators.
The framework works as follows: whenever I and Thou
exchange energy in the form of oral noise, the sense in which I is
accountable to Thou (or, vice-versa) will be defined and examined
with respect to the mutual expectations within the dyad that the
interaction sets up and the match or mismatch between the
induced expectations and the individual’s self-attribution of
accountability for fulfilling them, which in turn is analyzed with
respect to the expectations that the interaction sets up for They,
Them and Those, and as a function of the causal powers that TheyThem-Those have in the context of the dyad. What emerges is a
plenary sense of ‘accountability’ that embraces the reciprocal (IThou), relational (I-They, I-Them, I-Those) and reflexive (I-I,
Thou-Thou) dimensions of the phenomenon.
As indicated, the prototypical accountability scenario uses
as the starting point the making of a promise (by I to Thou).
The following analysis aims to make clear the role that the protagonists (I-Thou-They-Them-Those, or ‘IT4’) and the planes of
their interaction (behavioural-affective-visceral-discursive, or
‘BAVD’) take on in determining the presence and legitimacy of
accountability assignments.
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ible undertaking to bring about a particular event at a particular
time, such that I and Thou can both ascertain whether or not the
event has occurred, as can They, to the hypothetical satisfaction
of Them and Those. An ‘event’ entails a change in the property of
a substance at a specified time. A common pitfall of accountability interventions is to overlook the power of promissory language to equivocate by causing confusion. Promising to produce
a difficult-to-observe change ‘at some point in the future’ is not a
promise at all, because it has not specified an ‘event’.
In addition, not all promises actually promise: some are not
genuine, others are inauthentic, and some are self-refuting (‘I
promise to stop making promises’). In all such cases, the promise
is not credible. We need a model of a real promise: in making a real
promise, I produces behaviour and evinces feelings and sensations
that persuade both Thou and They that the promise is authentic, in
the sense that by making it, I binds himself to a commitment to
bring about the promised event, and, that both Them and Those
would be persuaded that the promise is authentic had they witnessed I’s commitment.
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direct witnesses to the interaction, but could provide a ‘third
opinion’ if called upon to do so. Examples include absentee team
members and mutual friends and acquaintances. Them will typically be known to both I and Thou, will know both I and Thou, and
both I and Thou will know that them knows both I and Thou;
• Those comprises ‘ideal observers’ – more rational, aware beings
that could be invoked by either party as a hypothetical witness –
or a cultural archetype that embodies what ‘most people’ would
do or think about the interaction. Those could also be an unbiased but still-hypothetical third party that could be invoked as
part of a calling-to-account or a reason-giving enterprise to adjudicate between us in case of a disagreement.
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Promising to produce a difficult-toobserve change ‘at some point in the
future’ is not a promise at all, because
it has not specified an ‘event’.
Step 1: Making a promise.
I makes a promise to Thou. The promise is genuine if it is a cred-
Step 2: Accepting the commitment embodied in the promise.
If there are no incongruities between I’s words, body language,
thoughts, feelings and raw feels that Thou can discern – which might
lead Thou to doubt the authenticity of I’s commitment – Thou
accepts I’s promise. Accepting a promise is not a trifle, and most
people will correctly feel that they have ‘un-committed’ themselves
if their promise is not duly acknowledged and accepted in the right
tone, with the right facial expression and the right words that jointly signal that Thou has accepted the promise at its face value. If
acceptance of a promise by Thou is authentic and genuine, I will recognize this, and Thou will know that I knows this, either on account
of I signaling this to Thou, or of Thou independently ascertaining it.
I is thereby accountable to Thou for the promise made.
Step 3: Anticipating the breach of a promise.
Assume that, for some reason unknown to I at the time he made
the promise, he will not be able to live up to his word. ‘Anticipatory
breach’ is very much part of our model of promises, for it is there,
as much as in any other part of the promising enterprise, that credibility and commitment are made and un-made. I realizes, before
the promise comes due that he will not be able to keep it, for reasons that either were unexpected but could have been foreseen (by
only I himself; only Thou himself, They alone, Them alone, Those
alone, any subset of the above, or all together) at the time the
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dict of non-performance the fact that I agrees with it. I knows
this as well, and knows that Thou knows that I knows it. Under
these conditions, I genuinely feels and believes that his promise
to Thou has been breached, and that he needs to account for this
breach. I knows that Thou knows this, and that Thou knows that
I knows this.
Step 6: Giving accounts for breaking the promise
Giving an account for a breached promise entails one or more of
the following:
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promise was made and accepted; or, were unexpected and unforeseeable by anyone at the time the promise was made. In this case,
I has to decide whether or not to inform Thou of the upcoming
impasse, whether or not to take responsibility for the failure of
foresight, and what account (if any) to give to Thou or They for the
failure of foresight. If, for instance, the decision could not have
been foreseen by anyone except Thou at the time the promise was
made, then I may be justified (in the eyes of They, Them, Those) in
not taking responsibility for the failure of foresight (although I is
still ‘on the hook’ for forewarning Thou about the upcoming
breach of his promise); and in giving an account that makes Thou
at least co-responsible with I for the failure of foresight.
Because many of us promise more than we can deliver with
alarming frequency, the realm of anticipatory breach is quite often
where executives and the cultures they create make or break their
accountability fabric. The difference between a flake and a responsible person cannot be ascertained in a one dimensional ‘score’ of
kept vs. un-kept promises: it also involves the integrity and cohesiveness of the process by which responsibility for anticipatory
breach of a promise is handled.
Step 4: Ascertaining the breach or fulfillment of a promise
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I does not fulfill the promise made to Thou, in the sense that the
event that I had undertaken to cause was not observed by Thou or
They, nor would it have been observed by Them or Those had they
been able to make their own independent observations. Note
that, at this point, the promise as made by I has been breached,
but the breach has not yet been ascertained. The quarterly report
was not delivered by I as promised, but no one has noted this yet.
In organizations, most breached promises are passed over in the
silence that befits ‘politeness norms’, which hide, nevertheless, a
deep-seated lack of respect for the identity and commitment of
the promissory.
Alternatively, the promise has been fulfilled: the report was
produced, on time, at the right level of detail and with the right
level of diligence. Again, there is likely no acknowledgement at
this step of the analysis, despite the fact that acknowledgment is
as important to kept promises as it is to broken ones: acknowledgment signals a release of I from his commitment to Thou via a
successful discharge of I’s obligation to keep his promise.
Step 5: Ascertaining and accepting that the promise has
been breached
I awakens, and, once awake, knows that the event that I had
undertaken to cause was not observed by Thou or They, nor would
it have been observed by Them or Those, and does not disagree.
Thou knows that I knows this (or ascertains it by bringing it to I’s
attention) and infers from I’s lack of disagreement with the ver-
a. producing an exculpation in the form of an explanation of the
causes of the breach of the promise (“it was physically impossible
to carry out the promise on account of X, which was something
that I could not have foreseen at the time of the promise”);
b. producing an exculpation in the form of a justification of the
reasons of the breach of the promise (“it was morally impossible or undesirable to carry out the promise on account of Y,
which was something that I could not have foreseen at the
time of the promise”);
c. producing an inculpation for the breached promise, wherein I
takes responsibility for some failure of knowing, feeling or
doing that led him to breach the promise.
They, Them and Those play crucial roles in both exculpations
(explanations, justifications) and inculpations, which together I
will call accounts. They, Them and Those function as (real or hypothetical) arbiters of: what a legitimate cause of a breach is (what
it is that I can claim to ‘not have been able to do’); what a legitimate reason is (what it is that I can claim to ‘not have been able
to feel or want’); and what it is that I can claim to ‘not have been
able to anticipate’ at the time of the promise. In producing
accounts for the breach of his promise, I produces the right language with the right feeling at the right time toward the right
person (Thou), which causes Thou to accept I’s recognition of the
failure and the excuse provided as authentic.
Step 7: Accepting or rejecting the accounts given
Whether or not Thou believes that the account is genuine (that I
is not self-deceived about it) and valid (that it would be accepted
by a They, Them and Those that operate above a minimum standard
of integrity and competence) is something that Thou decides on
the basis of not only I’s behaviour and evinced emotions, but also
on the basis of Thou’s all-things-considered evaluation of I. In the
ideal accountability scenario, Thou informs I about whether or
not Thou has accepted I’s account for his breached promise, and,
once again, the same standards apply: Thou produces the right language, with the right feeling, at the right time, toward the right
44 / Rotman Magazine Fall 2009
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Step 8: Re-committing
At this point, I may renew his promise to Thou, who has to decide
whether or not to accept the renewed promise. Acceptance or
rejection by Thou will depend on the following:
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• Thou’s acceptance or rejection of the authenticity of the excuses
provided by I for the earlier breach of his promise;
• Thou’s evaluation of the genuineness and validity of the excuses
provided by I for the earlier breach of promise;
• Thou’s evaluation of the authenticity and genuineness of I in
making the new promise; and
• Thou’s evaluation of the competence of I in making the new
promise.
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Thou’s evaluation of I’s authenticity will be based on Thou’s evaluation of the level of congruence among I’s feelings, sensations,
thoughts and deeds (including words) in producing excuses and
making the new promise. His evaluation of I’s genuineness,
integrity and competence will be based on judgments made by
Thou and They and hypothetical judgments that Thou believes
Them and Those would make about I given the observations that
Thou has registered.
The Lesson: Promising is Difficult
The difficulty of the commitment path sketched out herein
makes one thing clear: promising is difficult. Committing ourselves
to courses of action by uttering words and phrases is among the
most complex things that humans can do. No animal or computational device can substitute for the human agent in the act of
making a promise and following through on the path of commitment that it generates. There is no advance in artificial intelligence (and there have been many) that will have you ready to
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accept a computer’s analysis in lieu of that of your oncologist; and,
no amount or intensity of barking or meowing will persuade you
to accept a commitment from your pet.
The lessons of this model are many. Our interactions live in
multiple, parallel planes (BAVD), and it is the congruence of our
actions on these planes that makes our promises authentic and genuine. They, Them and Those are crucial elements of the very act of
promising, just like the chorus that ‘sees the truth’ is a key component of every Greek tragedy. Keeping promises is not the only way
to build accountability within an organization: breaking promises
‘in the right way’ – for the right reasons, with the right feeling – can
be equally constructive and helpful to the inner life of responsibility and agency within an organization.
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person (I in this case), which causes I to accept Thou’s acceptance
of I’s excuse as authentic.
Whether or not I believes that Thou’s acceptance of the
account is authentic (it represents what Thou truthfully believes),
genuine (I believes that Thou is not self-deceived about his belief,
even though Thou believes it truly) and valid (I believes that it
would be accepted by a They, Them and Those that operate at a
minimum standard of integrity and competence) is something
that I decides on the basis of not only Thou’s behaviour and
evinced emotions, but also on the basis of I’s all-things-considered evaluation of Thou.
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The realm of anticipatory breach is
often where executives and the
cultures they create make or break
their accountability fabric.
In closing
Keeping promises and accounting for their breaches in credible,
genuine and authentic ways is what makes organizations work,
societies thrive, and cultures promulgate themselves into the
future. The commitment path described herein can thus be seen
as an ‘audit trail’ for the journey of promising, a way of assigning
responsibility in the face of ambiguity and subterfuge.
It is also much more, as it can serve as a powerful regulative
tool for any speech act. Simply put, saying anything whatsoever is
a promise: it is a promise that what you have said is truthful and
truth-like; it is a joint commitment to sincerity and accuracy. If
you want proof of this, just place ‘I assert’ before a proposition,
like ‘Today is Tuesday’. You will get ‘I assert that today is Tuesday’,
which entails that I say it because I believe it, and I believe it
because it is true.
So, where does accountability start? It begins with you, as soon
as you open your mouth for the purpose of voicing a word.
Mihnea Moldoveanu is the Marcel Desautels Professor of
Integrative Thinking and Director of the Desautels Centre for
Integrative Thinking at the Rotman School of Management. He
is also the founder, past CEO and Chief Technical Officer of
Redline Communications, Inc., the fastest growing company in
central Canada during 2002-2007. He was voted one of Canada’s ‘Top 40 under
40’ for 2007.
Acknowledgment: The author is deeply grateful to his friends in the
Organizational Mindsets Practice at McKinsey & Co: Zafer Achi, Edy
Greenblatt, Christophe Mikolajkzak and Scott Rutherford for several
stimulating discussions and workshops on this topic.
Rotman Magazine Fall 2009 / 45
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