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What Does Accountability Mean to You?
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Students' Responses
Accountability is realizing your potential, for the society than for your own self.
-- Saif A. Siddiqui '06
Accountability is allowing others to build trust in you: your company, your executives, your actions and your vision for the world. The American public has lost faith in Corporate America and we, as business people, have to rebuild that trust through transparency and the creation of mutual respect.
-- Melanie Bates '07
Accountability is liberating. Accountability is when you overcome fear and accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions. An accountable person is more concerned about what is right than what others will think. An accountable person acts in good faith at all times allowing others to trust in them and depend on them.
-- Nicholas Buehner '07
Accountability requires a willingness to answer questions from those people affected by your actions. As a person becomes more influential accountability becomes ever more important.
-- Lex Hovani '06
Accountability is taking proper action and suppressing personal ambition.
-- Casey Kokos '07
Accountability means walking the walk once you have talked the talk. There is a lot of smoke and mirrors out there in today’s murky business world with promises made that are often unfulfilled. Holding one’s self accountable is a noble task that instantly earns the respect and credibility of those around you, for standing behind your opinions with conviction is far more fulfilling than achieving the outcomes of right or wrong.
-- Todd Kaplan '06
Accountability is integrity – a testament reflected in a continuity, rather than a dichotomy, between professional and personal values.
-- Nadia Gomes '07
Accountability is the ability to follow through with your commitments.
-- Jenny Lin '07
Accountability to me means that when the smoke clears, the person left standing is the one with the moral courage to say “I am the one who did this,” even when no one else knew who was actually responsible for the event in question. As a leader, you may have to challenge others when they have failed to assume responsibility for their actions.
-- Jason Robinson ‘07
Accountability is a binding promise with oneself and with society. It is an opportunity not an obligation.
-- Francisco Aguirre '07
Narrowly, accountability within the corporate context entails taking ownership of results, both positive and negative. But it would be a mistake for today’s leaders to define accountability strictly in terms of maximizing shareholder value. In an increasingly complex world, a company’s constituents are both more varied and more numerous than ever before. Tomorrow’s leaders will be defined by their willingness to take responsibility for metrics beyond simply financial performance and to be held accountable to a broader set of stakeholders.
-- Jon Schwartz '06
Accountability requires a deep personal understanding that we each are active members in global, national, and local communities. Membership requires that we honor these communities’ customs and laws, that we serve as these communities with integrity, and that we treat all community members with respect and dignity.
-- Stacy M. Abder '07
To be accountable is to consistently demonstrate the dedication to stand up and support an individual, group, or community, and to have the courage to do so even if you stand alone. It is a devotion that is only truly evident during the toughest of times.
-- Lynn Chang '06
Accountability is the allo-centric recognition that every action (or inaction) has consequences beyond those affecting yourself, and consistently signing your name to decisions creating those consequences.
-- Kevin M. Boughan '06
As a student from a developing country, accountability is not only about working hard to maximize shareholder returns; accountability is about making positive contributions to society. Firms and individuals must help society address the issue of poverty, must help balance economic development in the region, and must help to foster a fair and competitive environment.
-- Jim Jin '06
Accountability is the reciprocal of leadership. Whereas leadership involves having influence, accountability is the capacity to be influenced. Within a just system, every act of power must be counterbalanced by an equally-weighted responsibility. Therefore every change in the world should provoke the question: At what cost?
-- North Lennox '06
Accountability is the ownership of one’s actions. It reflects who is ultimately responsible for the outcomes one’s actions produce. Accountability itself is not a choice; one can only choose whether or not to recognize the responsibility. When one recognizes the responsibility, one affirms one’s membership in society. When one refuses to recognize the responsibility, one places oneself beyond the pale.
-- Chris Craige ‘06
Accountability means conducting yourself in a way that would make your grandparents (and your grandchildren) proud. It means honoring, exceeding, and improving standards. Accountability means recognizing the consequences of your decisions and the impacts of your actions. It means taking an active role in sustaining the community that surrounds you. It means following Gandhi's suggestion to be the change you'd like to see in the world.
-- Ann Grodnik '06
It means contributing positively to the good of society and being involved in solving issues facing the world community. It means adding value in more ways than to the bottom line. These goals are not mutually exclusive. Rather, by recognizing that the consequences of our decisions go beyond the balance sheet and the stock price, the next generation of managers will make informed choices that are about much more than just money.
-- Heather Stone '07
Accountability means that organizations must be responsive to the changing needs of the communities in which they serve. It requires a claim of responsibility for all intended and unintended community outcomes, and a responsibility to every community stakeholder, including clients and investors. Transparent accountability results in mutual trust and respect amongst constituents and can lead to a more successful distribution of resources.
-- Vinice Davis '06
Accountability is not a binary question of doing or not doing, a simple one-dimensional relationship between two actors in motion. It is the sum of a web of commitments to yourself, your community and your society. Constantly albeit imperfectly measured, accountability is used to parcel out trust and public confidence where it is due. Earned through honest advertisement of one's skills and intentions, it provides a common grease by which great endeavors are attempted.
-- Johnathon Cervelli '06
Accountability means walking away from any given decision being able to hold your head high knowing that you did the right thing whether it relates to business, public service, family, friends or strangers.
-- Jason Kadushin '06
Understanding and then making the correct choices, acting when action is required, and encouraging ethical behavior in others, this is accountability.
-- Marc Zemel ‘07
Accountability means being a rock that my family and friends can count on, providing a product or service that truly adds value to my customers, producing results and actually earning my paycheck for my employer, giving 100% effort during a game for my teammates, and using whatever talent and power I’ve been blessed with to help those less fortunate. Trust is ultimately built through accountability, and the ability to garner trust is the common thread of all true leaders – thus, accountability is the essence of leadership.
-- Vipan Nikore ‘06
My first job after college was managing an operations group in the mortgage industry, and by most measures I was extremely successful. I was accountable to my bosses, responsive to my customers, and improved my group’s structure, policies, and procedures. But based on my experiences at the Yale School of Management I have come to realize that being a successful manager means more. A higher standard of accountability as a business leader means recognizing that your ultimate responsibility is to your employees, and it is to this standard that I will aspire throughout the rest of my business career.
-- Andrew Smeltz '06
Alumni Responses
Accountability is about working hard with a purpose. For those of us in the private sector, the purpose is to maximize shareholder wealth, but doing so within both legal and ethical standards.
-- Michael J. Grigsby '01
Accountability, from the point of view of a Yale-Trained Manager, is leadership with character, compassion, wisdom, dedication, duty, honor, loyalty, determination, initiative, sacrifice, self-discipline, self-confidence and humility.
-- Alex Richardson ‘83
Friends' Responses
Compromising with myself in every aspect of my life in order to justify my existence.
-- Saúl B. Souza González
Accountability is self-driven energy that guides actions beyond the reactions. It is the courage to face the situation. It is the awareness that you have been entrusted to choose between right and wrong. Accountability is trust.
-- Sumit Mohan
Accountability fails us at responsibility. The focus then becomes who instead of what. Accountability is as plain as just being!
-- Kevin Grant
Accountability to me is being completely responsible for my myself, my actions and for people or things in my care in the most honest, dignified and fearless way regardless of the consequence. Trusting oneself enough to allow others to also invest some degree of trust in them in the hope that they will stand-up when it counts.
-- Marian Nana-Ama Toure
Accountability means accepting responsibility for how the ramifications of your actions affect others in your community. It also means striving for an awareness for positively influencing change that will make a difference others' lives.
-- Bonita Johnson
Accountability is the greatest form of selflessness; the enlightenment that the value of oneself is equal to the value of every other self.
-- Jonah Caine
Before there is accountability, there must be an agreement between two or more individuals or parties to strive towards perfection. Not that we'll ever reach perfection, we arrive closer and closer towards it as we strive to live, challenge, and be challenged by the truth and the highest standards as individuals and as a community.
With that agreement, we take ownership of the privilege entrusted to us and become accountable for our responsibilities. By receiving an overwhelming confidence from those of higher authority, we ourselves must be convinced that, whether we succeed or fail, we will make the biggest impact because our steadfast characteristics and commitment to the truth.
The truth...it is eternal, unaltered, and resistant to any human interaction. Accountability is simply a revelation of the truth.
-- Michael L. Mallari
Accountability is a life style. It will demonstrate whether your living is valuable.
-- Fei Long
Accountability is the responsibility you have for taking the appropriate actions within your circle of influence, and for the success or failure of those actions. This circle of influence includes not only your personal and professional life, but also all the opportunities you may have to generate impact on others.
-- Rafael De Leon
Accountability has no benchmark. It essentially starts with the degree of accountability one owes to oneself. The aim would be to "pay it forward" and ensure that it permeates through all levels of the organization. It is basically an ability to holistically comprehend, at the macro and micro level, all that one does.
-- Pradeep Krishnan
Accountability is all inclusive. Judges, professors and government officials who are clothed with special protections and immunities have equal if not higher fiduciary responsibilities and accountable obligations. In many cases these individuals, who are constantly evaluating the accountability of others, fail to satisfy their own standards that they have hoisted for others...
-- Professor J. David Golub
Accountability means taking responsibility and ownership for your actions and your words. It means understanding the weight and impact of them, and more specifically, it means standing by those actions and words with grace, confidence, and humility.
-- Kasia Kaplinska
Accountability means facing the world for all the good and bad consequences our acts have on the lives of other persons. Accountability means being able to confront criticism, but also to receive appraisal for our actions. The higher the level of responsibility within an organization (public or private) is, the higher the level of accountability, because you must answer to a broader group of interests.
-- David Guillermo Santos Rodríguez
Accountability goes beyond acknowledging and recognizing the responsibility to act in the best interest of others. Accountability also has the embedded responsibility of accepting the outcomes of decisions made, whether they be positive or negative. A true leader goes beyond simply admitting an error in judgment, but takes the necessary steps to improve undesired outcomes. On the other hand, a leader also shares the rewards of success with those who help make that success happen. A leader is merely an extension of the people who chooses to follow. Therefore, true accountability will most likely manifest itself where there is mutual trust.
-- Cedric Johnson, Fellow, National Endowment for Financial Education
Accountability means not just living up to the promise, but going one step above the stated promise. To genuinely care about the welfare of people and property in your sphere of influence.
-- Parashuram Venkatraman
I value accountability to the extent that I hold partners accountable. Accountability means understanding consequences and facing them gracefully. If business is the measure and management of risk, adaptation to change and brave action, accountability is the steadfast and still measure amid this ceaseless flux.
-- Andrew Farnum, WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.
With the publication of the Institute Of Medicine’s To Err Is Human, the subject of accountability has received a great deal of attention in healthcare. But accountability goes beyond medication error reporting in hospitals, there is buy-in at every level: the individual who quits smoking, the pharmacist who improves medication safety, the pharmaceutical company that decides upon further testing before launch, the government that enacts safer and timely laws. Accountability is about more than the individual, accountability is about each life that the individual touches.
-- David Pompei, Rush University Medical Center
Accountability is who you are when no one’s looking.
-- Deborah Lee
Accountability is performing ethically, with integrity, striving to improve the position of an organization and society, unselfishly.
-- Nasir Haque, Shoe Fitters, Inc.
Accountability is often defined as 'taking ownership of one's duties and obligations, and ensuring that these duties are performed with due professional care and integrity'. Accountability, however, encompasses a much wider spectrum of responsibilities, which include but are not limited to, taking responsibility of one's actions and its affects on oneself, others, and society as whole.
-- Mohammed Shujauddin Ahmed, Islamic Development Bank
Accountability is a dedication and devotion to more than just the self. When other people in society view your actions and comment on the good that came from it, you have been accountable to your fellow man.
-- Kin Pang, SAIC Consulting
Accountability: To be aware of all the expectations that surround you and to realize what you could do to stand up to those expectations. To gladly take responsibility for yourself and others that you mentor/guide and to be dependable.
-- Rashmi Rammurthy
Accountability is the courage to stand for your beliefs. There is no choice involved as beliefs can never be compromised. Taking responsibly for your work, your relationship and your social responsibility, on a day to day basis without the end in mind is accountability. As Tori Amos says, " When you stop putting yourself on the line, and you don't touch your own heart, how do you expect to touch other people? "
-- Saurav Gupta, STMicroelectronics
Accountability means a concern for the welfare of others and acceptance of the results of your decisions.
-- Steven Schwartz
Accountability is the focus of attention on an entity whose responsibilities are questioned.
-- Robert Childs
Making decisions and taking ownership of the results, and the consequences. In today's politically correct, uber-liberal world we watch as those in positions of authority and influence, blame others or blame circumstances, for the results of their actions.
-- Richard Klein
Whether it is the code of chivalry of medieval Europe, the beatitudes of Jesus, the way of the samurai in ancient Japan, or the Hippocratic oath of modern medicine, the meaning is clear; act in the interest of the world around you.
-- Steven Capps
Accountability means being part of a large group of people, and respecting all of them while making business. It is succeeding, without cheating on shareholders, clients, citizens living in the same area, or even people breathing the same air. Accountability means that succeeding in business is not just a question of making money, it is a question of making everyone a winner.
--Jerome Rochet
Bringing holistic improvement in the life of entities around oneself by being an example in action, towards a better state.
-- Sameek Ghosh
Accountability means being courageous enough to stand up for the values that you believe in, such as fair play and social justice, in face of the most trying and challenging times. Being accountable is having the intellectual honesty to admit your mistakes and the strength to go in a different direction.
-- Raji S. Gill, Lucent Technologies
Accountability fosters character, which begins with integrity. Effective leaders prophesize that lying, cheating, stealing, and situational ethics will not be tolerated. They understand that one's reasons validate the decision --- doing the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. Leaders are guided by Rule #1, "Always do what is right," while making difficult decisions that impact the welfare of others. True leaders live by example, with integrity, to elicit trust and confidence from subordinates. Trust inspires high levels of commitment and purpose, that are required from any lasting, highly successful team. Accountability requires us to hold ourselves and each other to these high ethical standards, at all levels of the organization.
-- Michael Hallinan, First Lieutenant, US Marine Corps
It means standing side by side with your result and that of others when stewardship of your leadership is called to question.
-- Usen Etim
Accountability means in the real world, walking a fine line. The ability of leadership to make tough decisions for the best of the company while providing for the benefit and to the benefit of all working members of the company. Accountability should be ethical, and management should become the highest level of intelligent actions and decisions.
-- Dianne Haynes
Accountability to me means taking responsibility for ones deeds or actions. It may be in a corporate environment or in a family or in the society. Whatever any one individual or a group does that effects one or more people either directly or indirectly, he or she or the group is accountable for that. So every person is obliged to give the best possible effort and make a positive impact.
-- Dhiman Bhattacharjee
Accountability is admitting responsibility for your actions even if the consequences are negative. This is a quality which can separate you from those who want to be leaders and those who truly are.
-- Michelle Wolfe
Accountability is more than following through on one's commitments. Rather, it entails the recognition of one's full potential and striving to realize it. As we assume positions of leadership, be it professionally or personally, it is imperative that we understand and appreciate fully the trust that is inherently placed in us. That trust is honored by embodying the ideals of those who put their faith in us, and by working tirelessly to see that that their hopes are realized as readily as our own.
-- Eric R. Crawford
Accountability is accepting responsibility for the outcome of an action or a set of actions and doing everything in your power to achieve the outcome consistent with the goals and values of yourself and your organization.
-- Kristi Fleischmann
Accountability means a combination of conscious actions, decisions and the willpower to execute them after understanding their implications for the people we are responsible for, keeping in mind the bigger picture of organizational performance. It means being with all and yet being able to take independent decisions. It means instilling in all the confidence in one’s leadership without forcing it. Accountability means taking a rational decision on behalf of those who have entrusted their careers and sometimes lives in one’s hands. In short accountability means the counterpart of responsibility.
-- Bharat Bhushan, Knack Systems
Accountability is not just ownership, it is a courageous endeavor taken at the time of need, to fulfill the common goals of a performing organization.
-- Anandhakumar Deekaram
To peers, to society and to one’s self, I add to this lot that accountability should imply an obligation to the future spirit of the organization to which one is in service. Responsible leaders are called to serve their organizations beyond the present scope; to invest themselves in the existence of an organization that endures beyond their tenure.
-- Nic Covey, Nielsen Media Research
Accountability is built on a ‘Value System’ that is focused on truth. From truth comes the acceptance of reality & failures. From acceptance of failures come real solutions and from solutions come true business growth based on correct principles. It is this principle-centered approach that can lead to real sustainable business growth. This business growth in turn reinforces the right principles. This has to be coming deep-down from each employee’s conscience. It has to be based on principles of higher learning’s; forgiveness; ability to comprehend why people/ consumers behave the way they do and the ability, at the end of the day, to contribute to the overall well being of the society. No amount of paper work can instill these right tenets.
-- Vikrant Dogra, IMRB International
I once read a quote by Michael Armstrong that comes to mind when i think of accountability; "The ancient Romans had a tradition: whenever one of their engineers constructed an arch, as the capstone was hoisted into place, the engineer assumed accountability for his work in the most profound way possible: he stood under the arch. " To me that is accountability. Having the courage to stand under the arch and to claim if for your own whether it stands stately and tall or whether it comes crashing down. We have always had a lot to learn from those Romans.
-- Mehreen Malik
I personally believe that accountability means harmonized existence among your peers. Being good to one self must also be good to others. Accountability should go beyond your personal and professional life. It should be the fundamental value of social existence for every individual. I'd like to see accountability as a socially tolerable personal ambition.
-- Ramoh Salemon | 
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发表于 2006-2-23 11:04:00
