NZBusiness October 2015

Dr Mike Ashby discusses how responsibility is a far more powerful concept than accountability in your business.  One of the disciplines of execution (according to Franklin Covey) is the “cadence of accountability”. This the idea that you establish a process for regular reporting and accounting for progress against undertakings. As a culture we’re very attached to accountability. We like the idea that the buck stops with someone, and that person will step up to deliver on their commitment. If they fail they’ll accept the consequences. I think accountability has significant limits in effective leadership and is actually something of a dead end street. It has connotations of being answerable or liable for performance, especially if things go wrong. I don’t have

An incident involving a mug of hot coffee provides a powerful lesson on managing health and safety. By Kimberley Lawry.  The other week I spilt my coffee. At home mind you, but a safety incident none the less.  I did not need to fill in an incident form, report it or investigate it, but it did get me thinking about safety and health, about near miss reporting, hazard identification and control mechanisms.  It got me thinking about whether I was a hazard that morning and what I could have done differently to stop the burn from happening in the first place. Perhaps more importantly, it made me realise how jargon-filled health and safety can be.  All of this from a spilt coffee