In this CEO podcast episode, Scott De Long and Vince Moiso discuss the importance of accountability culture within the workplace. Vince emphasizes the role of values, such as empowerment, transparency, integrity, authenticity, and passion, in fostering accountability. He shares the use of a one-page plan on an online platform to enhance transparency and accountability, with regular meetings to review progress. The discussion highlights the significance of delegation and empowerment in building an accountable culture, with both leaders emphasizing the need for open communication, coaching, and continuous improvement.
Transcript | Season 1, Episode 3
Scott De Long
Welcome to the CEO podcast cocktails, entrepreneurs, and opportunity. I am Scott De Long. I am here with Vince Moiso. And today, we will talk about accountability culture, a culture of accountability within the workplace, and our views on that, right, and how you get responsibility. And what happens when you do not? Talk to me a little bit about how you operate in your company and how you have been forced or empowered by folks. Or what words do you use when you talk about that? Because it can sound negative to people, right? Are you going to be accountable?
Vince Moiso
They can. How do you frame that? Well, it starts with the values, at least at least. This is the way that I have established them within our business. It starts with the values. And one of the values that we have is empowering people. Another one of the values that I have shared in a previous podcast is called Get Real, which encompasses transparency and integrity. And authenticity is another value in the pursuit of excellence. We expect that you are going to be great at what you do, give 100%, and execute what your role and responsibilities are. The last one is what we call En Fuego, which is just Spanish for on fire, which for us means passion. We want everybody to be passionate about what they do and be driven with a purpose to get what they need to get done. And we go over that. All the recognitions that we do within the business, recognizing people and acknowledging people for their jobs, are all around the values. An example would be the entire team would get an email that would say Scott was caught in the act of getting real, or Scott was caught in the act of being En Fuego. And then it would explain that, hey, Scott, want to acknowledge you for, you know, really taking this project to the finish line and getting the results that we all expected to
Scott De Long
Stop there for just a second. That comes from a friend of ours who runs a company called Lead with Purpose.
Vince Moiso
I utilize Mark Kohler. And, you know, again, I am happy to give him a shout-out. And we use his online platform, which allows us to post what I would call a one-page plan. It is visible to everybody,
Scott De Long
Is it part of your accountability process?
Vince Moiso
It is absolutely 100% a part of the accountability process. And you know, we are accountable to ourselves; we are accountable to each other. And we just encourage everybody to hold each other to a level of accountability. And part of that starts with transparency. We talked about that in an entire podcast. And if you listen to the podcast around transparency, you heard me say once or twice how accountability fits into that, and it is a big part of it. We utilize that one-page platform, where we show everything, what the priorities are, what tasks are assigned, and what is assigned. That way, we have an owner for everything, and then a task is assigned to the person who needs to get it done. Then, we meet weekly to review the progress of those tasks, goals, or priorities monthly. And you know, this as well, and I have talked to you about it before, is we have implemented the 12-week year model. We are taking a quarter and treating it like a year. It creates this sense of urgency and some organic accountability, very much like transparency. And what all that has been done within our organization is we just have accountability across the board across all teams and departments. You have got team members holding other team members accountable, not just managers holding,
Scott De Long
But there’s management responsibility there as well. What I found with this accountability piece is that you put out some simple things and say everyone can follow. And if I stopped looking at it, they stopped doing it because it was not important to me. Why should it be important to them? Right? I have had that happen a lot.
Vince Moiso
It is. Great points.
Scott De Long
I have a responsibility to do my end of that, to make sure that people know that it is important enough that I will take my time so that they will take their time and do the work.
Vince Moiso
I will follow through on the promise. That is the integrity piece of it. And again, referring to the transparency podcast, we talked a lot about integrity, and repeating that is keeping your word, right? As a leader, we have the responsibility to follow through on keeping our word, and that is a big piece of accountability. Okay, if I email you and tell you, Scott, I am going to get this project done. By Friday you know, I will have it for you by ten am10 am. Well, if I need to reset on that and say, hey, you know what, I am not done; it will be more like 12 o’clock; I just need to communicate with you and let you know that that’s going to happen. Otherwise, I’m held to my word, and I need to deliver that project to you at 10 am.
Scott De Long
You take that down to a micro level as well. Think about this afternoon. Right? We are going to start here at four o’clock. And you realize you had a commitment? Big commitment for you. The thing you need to do. I am going to be 15 minutes late. And you let me know two hours in advance. Yep. I will be there as soon as I can. But I must do this. Right at four, when we were planning to get together. Accountability holds to everybody.
Vince Moiso
It does not. I do not care who you are. And you know what, the example that you gave is a great example. Because that happens often. Sure. Right? You know, I think when two people are, you know, meeting, or if you have gotten multiple people meeting, the worst thing is a leader, that you show up 15 minutes late to the meeting that you called, right? Or you are not present, or you are not, or you are not present, I am there, I am on emails, I am doing something else. I mean, you know, all those things are things you must be in to win it. And you must set an example. You must be the example. Right. And if you are to your point earlier, which I could not agree with more if, if I am going to expect accountability from my entire team, then my entire team should expect accountability from me.
Scott De Long
And can they call you up? How does that happen within your business? We make mistakes, right? And someone calls you out? How does that happen?
Vince Moiso
It can happen in a meeting that someone will be. We are at a point where, again, it is one of these things that I just must repeat all the time that we are all accountable to each other. I remind everybody, including me. And I ask for people to hold me accountable as much as I do. I’m requesting it and making it very clear that they can do that, which puts them at a comfort level, a trust level that they feel okay with, that they are not going to, there is no backlash.
Scott De Long
Well, your reaction to that builds that trust, right? Handle and say, you are right, I messed that one up. I am going to make sure I am not going to do this again. And here is how I am going to do that as opposed to the look someone gives you when calling you out.
Vince Moiso
You know, my normal reaction is very intentional because I do not have any sort of body language or surprise or anything like that. I expect to be held accountable if there is something that I am missing or if there is something that I am doing or not doing. And it can happen. It can happen during the meeting and has happened during the meeting; it can happen via email and has happened via email. And again, it happened during just a regular phone call, or, you know, I have one-on-ones often during the week. And I remind everybody to hold me accountable. And my team is not afraid to hold me accountable as much as I hold them accountable.
Scott De Long
How do you react? I have got a process that I go back; I am not going to put you on the spot; I will tell you what I would do. Because I like being held accountable as well. I do not necessarily like it, but I need it. And I need to project that that it’s okay for everybody.
Vince Moiso
Well, let’s be honest, nobody likes it. Like, you know, no one, no one loves to be called out on their shit. You know, I mean, that’s what we’re talking about. But that, I think when, when you can strip out the emotion and say, Hey, I’m not. I’m coming from a place of care. When I say we’ve all got a job to do, and you missed your part of it. I’m just calling you out to hold you accountable. We can get back on track and seek solutions, not because I’m trying to call you out to hang out and make you look bad. But our first human reaction is while I look bad, and we’ve I know I do this. I beat myself up already about it. I’m coming into it knowing already most of the time, and I beat myself up over it. All the beatings have been done. I don’t want to hear it from somebody else.
Scott De Long
The worst thing a leader can do in this case is give an excuse on why they screwed up. Might be a reason, right? But here’s what I want to say all the time. My reasons sound like excuses when you hear them. And that’s exactly what it’s being taken. The first thing that I do is apologize, which is my behavior. I’m sorry, I’m not going to do that again; here’s what I am going to do to stop hunger. Right, as opposed to buying at an important meeting and all these other reasons, and their legitimate reasons. They are this story, but it always sounds like an excuse to the other person. We talked about earlier, the communication thing that, you know, is what they hear, not what you say. I say a reason they hear an excuse. I made a commitment to you. And I did not want to live by it. My bad.
Vince Moiso
Well, you asked, you said, Do I have a process? How do I how do I react? And I smiled because, you know, in a previous podcast about communication, you talked about the process that that the TED process specifically, and I often say, I seek to understand it is the Stephen Covey habit, right, habit number five. And I say, “Tell me more.” Yeah, I would like to hear more. Great. And then once I feel like I have got an understanding of where they are at, especially for something I am not aware of, then okay, yes, I own that. That is on me.
Scott De Long
That can happen. Two things can happen that you are not aware of. Can you believe it? Imagine that.
Vince Moiso
There are things that we do, no matter what, no matter how hard we try; I would love to give you a look. But I have said this in two previous podcasts: I totally practice 100% of what I coach and teach; I just do. That said, I am still not perfect; I make mistakes, always learning, and always getting better. I am always improving, and I’m going to make mistakes; there’s just going to be blind spots. And there are going to be things that happen. There are things that I do subconsciously that I don’t realize, and hence the need for accountability. If we can’t call each other out, if we can’t be direct, then you know how many times, Scott, in your experience, I know I’ve experienced this many times, I will say twice, might be more than. How many times in your experience have you not had accountability set as a part of your culture? And this thing just festers and festers. I remember early in my career, we called it the 110/100 rule, where something started at one. Yeah. And if you have an accountability culture, you can catch it at once. If it gets to that 10 or 100. Space, just because no one wants to, everybody’s afraid to hold anybody else accountable. And you let it fester. And it just becomes this elephant.
Scott De Long
Do not think people are talking to other people about that elephant and making that thing bigger. They might not be talking to me if I am not, if I am not open, they are going to tell somebody, and then someone is going to tell someone, and it’s going to grow and just get ugly. As much as my face doesn’t like hearing negative things about myself. My soul needs those things tall. Because I don’t know that I’m doing things wrong all the time. I mean, there are times you said that. Yeah, I’ve already beat myself up over that. But there are some things that happen during the day. But I have no idea how I landed on somebody else. Yeah. And that hurt them. It. It started destroying that trust; is it whatever it did to them? And if I don’t know about that, if they don’t, if they’re not willing to tell me, and I’m not willing to accept that. All it’s going to do is fester, yeah. And that person is going to end up being angry and upset; they may leave, they may be destructive, or whatever. I’d rather hear it now. Accept it, own it. I feel bad about it. I don’t want to want bad stuff. But if I don’t know, I’ll do it again.
Vince Moiso
We all need that. We all want that. I believe my opinion, of course. But accountability is part of a culture and is the glue. It is the adhesive that holds your whole culture together. The easiest way to break down a culture is exactly the example that we just gave earlier when those things fester. People are talking about it anyway, and it becomes toxic. And when someone is upset, and resentment is created around something that was done or not done, whether that’s by a leader or someone else in the organization, and no one is bold enough to be direct about it, and come home from a space of being solution based, right? From a place of caring and looking towards solutions, right? If you’re not there, which is all part of the accountability culture that I have created, if you’re not there, there is no glue, nothing, nothing stable. It’s a house of cards at that point, as far as I’m concerned. If you don’t have one, I’m going to be this fold. If you don’t have accountability as a part of your culture, it is an important part of your culture. I think it’s a house of cards.
Scott De Long
Talk about a house of cards; I worked with a company that had a big canvas; they called them wordles. You have words that turned into a picture? At the center of it was accountability. And then there are words that mean accountability all throughout this thing. And they had this built up on a big, like this wide. That tall. And it was right in their conference room. After about three weeks, the next time I walked into that meeting, the first thing I did was I walk over and turned the picture around. Because they were not living in this, this leadership team was not living it. Everyone was finger-pointing. They were like saying no, but then making excuses and all those for every little thing that happened, right? And that is what happens in business, little things that happen. And then they fester. Do you know why? I walked in? Why turn this fragging thing around? And they were shocked? Like, if you are not going to live it, do not talk about it.
Vince Moiso
So why didn’t they live in it?
Scott De Long
Because it was because of the culture there that if we can blame somebody else, if we can put it off, and we can make the customer’s fault, we can make it somebody else’s fault. We can do all that. We can be okay. That is why they were not living it. You are not going to blame me for that thing.
Vince Moiso
Now I can tell you what I think the root of the lack of accountability in a culture is it is truly empowering your people. Now, if you are,
Scott De Long
I am a Harry Truman fan; the buck stops here; it’s the boss’s fault that happened.
Vince Moiso
That 100%. But let me let me say this, though I know you’ve been with many more organizations that do what I am about to describe. You have leaders in the organization, and the CEO, the president, and a VP, and they are doing most of the work and not really empowering their managers to fulfill their role and responsibility. Or the managers are not letting their people do the work and empowering them to fulfill their roles and responsibilities. There are many terms for it. One of the most overused terms is micromanagement, where the manager, or C level, or whatever leadership role is doing most of the work anyway, or at least in their junk all day, never feels good. It is not right there. There’s no place in business for that type of leadership or management at all. And the reality is, how can you hold somebody accountable for something they’re not even doing because you haven’t empowered them to do it?
Scott De Long
Here is why I am laughing about this: this is what ends up happening. I tell the story often that most times when I am working with entrepreneurial companies, entrepreneurs typically are not great managers; they are builders, and they get things going. And a lot of times when the venture capitalists come in, the founder ends up getting moved out because they’ve hit their limit because they can’t manage the larger organization. But prior to that, I get called into entrepreneurial companies quite often, where the CEO is saying that they hired all these smart people, and they’re not meeting my expectations, and they’re not doing their thing. Can you fix them? Well, the problem is not them. Part of the problems there. I get in, and I start working with leadership teams. Great, that’s fine. Then, I ended up doing this one-on-one coaching with the CEO because these people all want to do a great job. They got hired because they have great experience. And they’re smart, and they’re strong. But this in entrepreneurs is, you know, I was an entrepreneur most of my life. I get this those entrepreneurs don’t let go, right? We want to hold on so tight because we’re the smartest guys in the room. No, you’re not. You built this thing. And the entrepreneur doesn’t let people have things. I hired you to be great, and you’re not being great. Well, there’s a reason for that.
Vince Moiso
CEOs, leaders, presidents, vice presidents, and those who are a part of the executive team entrepreneurs? I really want you to hear what Scott just said. It can be summed up in one word: Delegate and empower your people to do their jobs. I had the hardest time with that, Scott. So, as I transitioned from my previous business, we all did it. And I moved into, you know, a new business and a leadership role. And I immediately wanted to control everything I just wanted to control. Once, I took on a delegation.
Scott De Long
You used to be the guy with the broom, used to be you did all those jobs.
Vince Moiso
Well, it is the old mantra, right? This is the trap we fall into. It is the old mantra: you want something done, right? Well, do it yourself. I wish that phrase did not exist. Honestly, I wish it did not exist because the reality is, no one is going to do it like you. No one is because there isn’t another use for it. It was so aggravating and disappointing for me because I just expected everybody to be like me. I expected everybody to run at my pace. I expected everybody. Can you imagine how disappointed I was?
Scott De Long
But here is the thing. If they were you, would they be competing with you?
Vince Moiso
For your course, they would. I mean, the lunacy of the thought is just crazy. Here is what is going to happen. I got religion on the fact that, Hey, it’s okay. Suppose they don’t do it exactly how I would do it. I’ve got to allow that to happen. I freely delegate as much as I can. And I live and embody empowering people to do their job. It’s the quintessential thing that must be done if you want to hold them accountable.
Scott De Long
What do you do then? You empower folks; you let them do their job. And you know, what could have been done? Or do you believe it could have been done better? Or faster or whatever? How do you what do you do with that?
Vince Moiso
Well, gee, what’s my job as a leader to coach and support, right? That’s what a coach does. I grew up, you and I both grew up in sports, we came up in sports; God knows I never want to coach like, I was coached when I was a kid because I don’t think there’s a place for that. These days. I’ve learned a lot along the way that we can take from all the athletics that we participated in. And one of which is just think of fundamentals, you know, when you weren’t doing something, right, the coach came over and showed you how to do it, right? Then, the next two times, I did it right. Wow, what a novel idea. Then, as an entrepreneur, CEO, and active in the business, you mean you just must show them, teach them, or coach them how to do it? Wow. Okay, that’s it. If I’ve truly empowered my employees, which we’ve done, they’re empowered to do their job. And as I watch it, witness it, or whatever unfolds, or whatever the results are, I can come back and spend that one-on-one time with them, and coach them and say, hey, I think you did a great job. Here’s where you did great. For these three things, there’s one thing that I think has an opportunity for improvement. And here’s what I would recommend, and here are some tools that I think can help you get better at that.
Scott De Long
I think there’s even one more step. I don’t visit another step, but this person is doing that thing. And they’ve done it several times, and they’re better at it. I’m going to assume that they’re doing that they’re better at than I am today at doing that thing. Yep. What if, right? And here’s the fourth thing, you know, these are things you did great. And here’s the fourth thing: here’s an idea. What do you think? And open that dialogue with a what do you think thing? Well, I did it this way. But you know if I took your idea and then tweaked it a little bit? Could they potentially do it better than us? Yeah. I’m going to do lots of stuff, not this thing.
Vince Moiso
I’m smiling because then I’m reminded of, you know, around the discussion of our previous podcast, which was around communication, and your whole course is called fostering proper dialogue. Right? Like, it’s, it’s all about dialogue, and you bring up a really, great point that I left out, which is, hey, what do you think, is that I asked the questions, what do you think, is that fair? You know, is that valuable? Does that help? I want to make sure that the advice and coaching that I’m offering is helpful. Does it support what you want to do to get the results that you want? And I always ask for that feedback. Scott let’s wrap up this whole discussion around accountability, and I feel like we could go, you know, another whole 30 minutes to an hour talking about accountability because it has many, let’s say, different things.
Scott De Long
How do you do it? Like what were the tools and techniques that you used to record tools? All those things? There’s a lot to that.
Vince Moiso
I mean, I think it just goes back to what I said earlier; a culture is not a culture without accountability in it. Now, do you need to use the word accountability as a value as a part of your culture? No, not necessarily. But it can be a component of one of your values, right? You know, you can use it in a lot of different ways. But accountability must be part of it. And it goes hand in hand with empowerment. Ans, if you’re not empowering your people, it’s hard to keep them accountable to their role and responsibility. I think you’ve got to understand that those two things go hand in hand, and like we always say in our podcast, Scott and I have a lot of information and a lot of content around these topics. If you’ve got feedback, if you disagree with some feedback, let us know if you have questions. Let us know.
Scott De Long
Or a better way of doing something for us. Like, we’re open. Let us know.
Vince Moiso
We’d like to hear from you. What are we drinking today?
Scott De Long
This one is Sculpin. Got a little, so we’ve been going on the citrus flavors right now. It’s got a little grapefruit.
Vince Moiso
Hold on to this. This is a billion-dollar IPA right here. Yeah, this is right. We’re talking about Ballast Point. Right. San Diego. Great brewery. I’m a big fan of Sculpin. Again, I’m an IPA guy. I can never refuse to drink, and Sculpin is one of the better canned IPAs you can get.
Scott De Long
I still prefer it off the tap.
Vince Moiso
That’s pretty good.
Scott De Long
Thanks for coming back to the CEO Podcast. If you have topics, you want to hear us debate about. For us. This is fun. And we’re sitting around having a beer and talking about business concepts. So let us know what you think. And thank you for showing up.
Vince Moiso
Until next time, cheers.
