I was reviewing accountability and it struck me to think about this one day when reading the LA Times. Here is what I discovered:

LAPD Officer’s Lawsuits Costing City Millions – LA has paid more than $18MM in settlements from about 45 of 250 cases. The city has prevailed on 50 lawsuits with over 150 cases still pending.

Riding Herd on a Legacy – Dwindling bison herds at Trexler National Preserve resulted in questions about why there are no baby bison. It was uncovered that the herd has been on birth control for more than a decade to control unplanned birthing.

Trying to Fill a Hole in Clinic Regulation – An orthopedic was successful in litigating a victory to build his own outpatient medical clinic without a state license. This stripped the state Dept. of Health of its jurisdiction over clinics owned by doctors and this is now the responsibility of the Medical Board of CA. This is a problem in that the Medical Board of CA has no expertise in inspecting or regulating surgical facilities and inspection power current vests with four nonprofit independent accreditation agencies. Each with differing standards that has lead to ‘accreditation shopping’ where a revoked licensee and simply apply to another.

These stories all have a common theme; a lack of accountability for results. And this is just a few handpicked stories picked out of one day- I easily could have selected 10-15 more for that day’s paper. Trying to put a dollar sign on the impact is impossible – the LAPD future lawsuits are inestimatible, how do you calculate the costs of unborn bison and the Clinic Regulation environment must lead to poorer service – and that is exactly why we have inspections, even if these are not very effective. We pay so much for these services that we should demand excellence in all aspects of them. 

We live in a world today where political figures deny truth, others fabricate stories, histories of neglect and abuse continues for decades and business managers avoid negative conversations with their subordinates to avoid controversy. It is time to stop coddling marginal results and failure and demand excellence and accountability an organizations. Accountability is a two-way street; we get rewards for doing a great job, job security for doing a good job but we should also be penalized for doing a poor job. I expect that many problems at an organization or in society would be solved if we held people accountable for results. I believe that somebody is always responsible and that they should ultimately be held accountable for a result. 

I recall the excellent quote from Vince Lombardi on winning, “Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all- time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time.  Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”

For businesses, I recommend substituting the word “excellence” for the word “winning”. By holding people consistently accountable for their results, we make excellence a habit. We each deserve nothing more, and nothing less