Accountability
Accountability, as a coaching tool, separates three things people blur together - responsibility, authority and accountability itself - so a team can see exactly where the gap sits instead of using the word as a vague complaint about other people.
Five boxes run in sequence, from naming the distinction through mapping roles to agreeing new commitments.
Reach for this when…
- People keep saying 'nobody's accountable' without anyone naming who should be.
- A decision stalls because two people both think it's the other's call.
- You want to fix accountability gaps without another vague values conversation.
How to run it
- Introduce the distinction between responsibility, authority and accountability.
- Map current roles against a RACI or similar structure.
- Identify where accountability is unclear or missing entirely.
- Discuss what would need to shift to close each gap.
- Agree new commitments and a follow-up date.
A worked example
Situation. Eric Mugisha managed a branch network for Umurenge Finance, a microfinance lender in Kigali, Rwanda, where loan approvals routinely stalled because branch managers and the credit team both assumed the other held the final call.
Applied. He ran a RACI mapping session with both groups and named, line by line, who was actually accountable for each stage of approval, not just who was involved.
Result. The credit team turned out to hold the accountable seat for exactly one stage, and had been quietly holding up three others waiting for sign-off that was never theirs to give. Approvals moved again within the week.
The catch
The exercise surfaces gaps, it doesn't resolve the underlying territorial fight over who wants the authority; that conversation still has to happen honestly. RACI-style mapping can turn into a bureaucratic exercise, a document instead of a real behaviour change, if nobody revisits it. Accountability named on paper means nothing if the person given it isn't actually given the authority to match.
Naming someone accountable without giving them the authority to match is setting them up to fail, not holding them to account.
Origin: Various