One of my work peeves is when people fail to take ownership for outcomes. At KFC they put it in a nice neat concept they called the accountability ladder. At the bottom rung you are powerless or so you think. Relying on others’ actions to determine the outcome for you. At the tip top you own outcomes even if you don’t have all the resources and authority to affect outcomes.
So you’re the courier at the ad agency and you can sit and wait for someone to tell you what to do. Or you can make your own job. You can help media update the scrap book or track competitive advertising or any of 100 jobs available to be done. You can bring back the letter that someone addressed wrongly and say “that’s what they gave me” or you could make damn sure it reaches Mr Jones in Frederick Settlement not Frederick Street. Saying you didn’t deliver it because it had the wrong address or you could not find it may have been more excusable 100 years ago before mobile phones. (And even then you could find a way) The key is ownership. At pepper, we have a courier named Damian Primus who knows how to climb.
When someone says or implies they didn’t do something because somebody didn’t do something; I feel like doing something. And it does not have anything to do with giving them recognition or reward or a promotion.
So I encourage all the people around me to climb the accountability ladder. Climb away in 2010 and beyond. Only you can keep you down.
