Quotes About Accountability

Do we really have to talk about professionalism? Everyone here is a professional. A master builder who puts up a wall that hasn't collapsed is certainly acting professionally, but professionalism ought to be the norm, and we should only be talking about the dodgy builder who puts up a wall that doesn't collapse....This insistence on professionalism, that it is something special, makes it sound as if people are generally lousy workers.

Si un pastor falla, hay que separarlo de los otros pastores, pero, ¡ay si las ovejas empezaran a desconfiar de los pastores!

No one believes their misfortunes are attributable to any shortcomings of their own; that is why they must find a culprit.

Poichè nessuno pensa che le sue sventure possano essere attribuite a una sua pochezza, ecco che dovrà individuare un colpevole.

I'd never understood whether the vogue for apologising is a sign of humility of impudence: you do something you shouldn't have done, then you apologise and wash your hands of it.

Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it's real and you're not to blame.

I am under orders, as much so as any private in the army. The American people are my boss, and I have the job of finding out what they want, and doing it.

Newspapermen are human, and cannot be blamed by their owners if now and then they yield to the temptation to publish the news.

One of the hardest things we have to do is learn to take responsibility for our own actions. Trying to sidestep actions that deep down we know are shameful is a powerful instinct. From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

That was one of the reasons she'd liked working for Carol Jordan. The boss cared about her results, not the minutiae of how she got them, provided that nothing Stacey did was going to come back and bite them in the arse at a later stage.

As I just stated, one of the most useful beliefs of successful trading is that when you don't follow your written rules, then you've made a mistake. In addition, if you don't have such written rules, then everything you do is a mistake.

If more than one person is accountable, then no one is accountable

All executives and middle managers should have a coach (or peer coach) holding them accountable for behavioral changes. We

Avoid checking up on whether someone did something the previous day. Team members will start feeling like they are being micromanaged. In general, looking forward is great management; looking backward is micromanagement.

read Margaret Heffernan's book Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril and Liz Wiseman's Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. To

Who, What, When (WWW): Improve the impact of your weekly meetings by taking a few minutes at the end and summarizing Who said they are going to do What, When.

Citizenship, after all, is not an entitlement; it requires work. Yet too many citizens of republics, ancient and modern, come to believe that they deserve rights without assuming responsibilities—and they don't worry how or why or from whom they inherited their privileges.1

In fact, a mere 535 elected senators and representatives can hardly become acquainted with, much less even read, some 175,496 pages of the Federal Register or monitor 2.7 million employees—without the enlistment of more bureaucrats to monitor bureaucrats.12

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth...In fact freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.

The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

He who is not master of his own thoughts is not accountable for his own deeds.

Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine

When one does wrong, one must do it thoroughly.

He was not to perceive that of two men engaged in an action so hideous, he who permits the thing is worse than the man who does the work, because he is the coward!