Sherri Petro, President and Chief Strategy Officer of VPI Strategies, represents VPI Strategies on the Expert Panel for Managing Americans. ManagingAmericans.com is a management blog with more than 300,000 monthly readers. Sherri contributes monthly to the Workplace Communication Skills Blog and is one of the most highly read columnists.
This month’s article is “Promises, Promises: The Power of Keeping Our Word”
Here is a sneak peak:
While Halloween is long gone, we still are graced with a scary word that is permeating corporate consciousness. It’s four—–teen letters. It has executives, middle management and front line supervisors stumbling and bumbling around looking for answers. The lack of it is often talked about as the reason for our business woes.
Lack of passion? Nope, that’s only 7 letters. Lack of engagement? Still too short, but a great guess! Need more hints?
- Hint 1: Sarbanes Oxley was intended to help with it.
- Hint 2: We’ve been talking about the need for more of it in our organizations for a decade plus.
- Hint 3: It’s the A in the R-A-C-I decision-making matrix.
Okay, the suspense is over. The word we are searching for is accountability.
If we create accountability, we will have less corruption. If we create accountability, we will have better corporate results. If we create accountability, we will have better relationships and communication because people would be less ticked off at each other for not doing what they say they would do.