Can accountability exist without authority?

The ubiquitous way of structuring companies is by nesting areas of responsibility. You introduce well-defined areas and problems, and assign them to people, so that each area or concern has exactly one person responsible for it.

The nesting bit is because these areas roll up into wider areas. If someone is responsible for hiring, they might decide to further spread this responsibility across geographies. So you might have someone responsible for hiring software developers in London, rolling up into a UK hiring lead, rolling up into a global talent partner, rolling up into a chief operating officer.

I’m not a fan of this model, but it wouldn’t be that bad if it stopped at responsibility. The real problem arises when people are made accountable for the area they get assigned to.

Being accountable means that if the outcomes in your area are unsatisfactory, you get blamed for the situation. What’s the problem with accountability? Isn’t having people accountable kind of natural if we divide the areas of responsibility?

The problem with accountability

There are several issues with dividing the responsibility across areas and then having the people responsible accountable for the results.

Interdependencies between the areas

First of all, dividing the whole into parts, and assigning authority over each part to a person doesn’t work, because the parts are interdependent. In order to get good outcomes overall, which is the ultimate goal, the various parts must act in concert.

This is why in no company ever you’re fully in charge of an area, and you can make all decisions. It’s because no area is independent.

If you work in sales, and the product you sell is not great, your sales will be impacted. If your sales department struggles, and revenues are not what they should be, your budget in other areas is going to constrain what’s possible.

Accountability cannot exist without authority

Secondly, accountability cannot exist without authority. If I’m accountable for the outcomes, I cannot be merely an advisor. I must be the decision maker.

If I tell you what we should do, but when we disagree we do it your way, then I’m an advisor, and you should be accountable for the outcomes.

In almost all companies, authority follows the same hierarchy that responsibility gets assigned according to. So if you’re responsible for an area, your manager, who’s responsible for the containing area, has authority over you and your area. All the way up to the CEO.

And nobody can be held accountable for the outcomes if they have no authority.

Discontinuous authority doesn’t work either

For someone to be held accountable, there can be no exceptions to their authority. People who used to be accountable can become advisors, but once overruled, one cannot be held accountable again.

So if there’s a left or right turn, I advise to go right, and you choose to go left, you become accountable from that moment onward. You cannot abdicate right after, leaving the helm in my hands, and saying that I’m accountable.

Because there might not be a viable outcome down the path we just took. And going back to turn right might even be impossible. So I can become responsible for the area, focusing all my efforts there, but I cannot be accountable for the results, because by making that choice you constrained what results are possible.

Constraints of various kind define the situation and limit what’s achievable.

Imagine you outsourced product development for 4 years, built a low-quality product and hard-to-maintain systems, raised too much money or too little, too early or too late, and you’re now facing the consequences of your actions. It’d be disingenuous to put somebody in charge of product development and expect them to turn the situation on its head, without being ready for drastic measures.

The alternative

People can be asked to direct various areas, and given authority over them. But since this authority is always limited, various constraints limit what’s possible, and the outcomes are the product of the interactions of the various areas, holding somebody accountable for things they cannot control is naive and immoral.

The alternative to this anti-systemic approach is recognizing that in every company the CEO is accountable for everything. The remaining directors should be co-responsible for the direction of the company, and each responsible for their own area. In terms of efforts, not in terms of accountability over the outcomes.