As an organization, total accountability is an important driver of corporate trust. By holding yourself accountable you achieve a greater level of transparency. In fact, in a recent report by Label Insight that was published on NBC news “found that 94 percent of consumers would be more loyal to brands that practice transparency, while 56 percent claim that brand transparency would make them “loyal for life.”
The proof is in the pudding. Own up to your mistakes, fix them and turn negatives into positives. Your most disgruntled customer can transform to become one of your most raging fans.
Culture is everything. It does not matter who you are or what you do. Simply put, everyone on this Earth has an obligation to be responsible and practice total accountability. It is up to us to create the mindset of being responsible, transparent, and accountable. While most may find it difficult to put this into practice, it is not any more complex than do what you say you are going to do. You will not set improper expectations and therefore have very few lawsuits or other negative issues.
Through our research, we have found that decentralized organizations make this easier to implement. When an organization is run from bottom to top, it truly forces the entire company to be accountable.
Lean into being accountable and transparent. The best companies already train their employees to do this and are further enhancing relationships with their clients. We must become Fiduciary’s and place the client’s best interest first.
So how can you start?
Adherence to standards and terms are massively important for Total Accountability to be implemented. A company can create any internal measures and consequences, or it can come externally in the form of social, stakeholder, or governmental pressures.
As an industry leader in sustainability, employee-founded practices Total Accountability with that standard. Even its most popular beer, Fat Tire, holds an environmental accolade of being America’s first carbon-neutral beer.
In the 90s, as the company was expanding, it wanted to build a facility reliant on wind power, which naturally…and naturally…required a ton of capital. Dedicated to the cause, New Belgium Brewing’s employees unanimously decided to give up their profit-sharing bonuses to fund the project. In that moment, this across-the-board commitment to sustainability solidified the company’s culture.
With zero SEC enforcements and zero class-action lawsuits, New Belgium Brewing has carried its commitment to sustainability forward over the decades. Here’s a great example: Its facilities rely mostly on renewable energy. If they must use fossil-fuel energy, guess what? The company voluntarily taxes itself and then uses that money to fund emissions-reducing projects. Genius!
Perfection does not exist in this world. How accountable you are when you deal with failures makes a bigger difference then you think. Trust is earned, not given. This is why Total Accountability is a major Key Performance Indicator of Transparency and is precisely how a high level of trust is gained. We must be humble and empathetic to accept mistakes in order to fix them.