Goal Setting Lessons from the Project Management Profession Part 3 – Accountability Partnership

I do not know about you, but I have been part of some successful project teams. There is that special feeling of accomplishment and fulfilment, when the final project document is signed off, or when the facilities you have helped to build is finally started up and they run successful. It is a moment of celebration, an experience you want to relive.

I have also participated in many failed projects. It is a terrible experience, especially when hindsight unveils the things the team failed to do to succeed – things that were totally within their control. You feel like soldiers who have been beaten in battle! But this is avoidable.

The progress review meeting (you may call it project accountability meeting), one of many project management best practices, is indispensable to project success, although many do not realize its value. I shudder to imagine what project management, and project outcome, would be like without regular progress review meetings, especially when there are managed well.

It is a moment of accountability when the contractor or project team gives account to the client for what was promised and what was accomplished during the period in view. It is a moment of truth, sometimes uncomfortable truth!

It is one moment that the managers of troubled projects look forward to with anxiety. Yet it is at the very heart of good project management, and separates successful project teams from the failures. It is when project stakeholders look back and look ahead.

Without effective progress meetings, everyone would be in the dark regarding both the past and the future of the project.

Yet how many of us approach the goal setting process, and treat our effort at achieving our goals, like a project without progress review meetings? We do not build accountability into the process.

Let me be very direct with you. Do you have an accountability mechanism build into your goals setting and implementation process? If not, then you are like an aircraft pilot in flight with a flight plan that does not have course correction built in. You may never arrive at your destination!

Most people who set goals do not build accountability process into it. That is why they do not achieve their goals.

Dan Diamond, lends credence to this in his essay in Forbes magazine (https://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2013/01/01/just-8-of-people-achieve-their-new-years-resolutions-heres-how-they-did-it/#799df17b596b), where he reported a University of Scranton research that suggested that only about 8% of Americans who make New Year resolutions actually keep them. A whopping 92% do not. He traced the poor performance to lack of accountability.

Not having an accountable partner

to help a person accomplish their goal

is one reason 92% of people

did not accomplish their New Year’s resolution

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountability_partner)

Perhaps, Marketing Consultant, Strategic Business Coach and International Speaker, John Di Lemme, had this in mind when he stated:

“Accountability separates the wishers in life

from the action-takers

that care enough about their future

to account for their daily actions”

What is an Accountability Partnership then? And how does it work?

It is simply an arrangement where two people hold themselves to account for the commitments they made. Typically, they meet either face-to-face or virtually periodically (weekly, fortnightly, monthly etc.) to review and hold themselves to account for what they had individually committed to do.

For example, my Accountability Partner and I meet virtually, via video conference, once a week for 30 minutes although the meeting sometimes extends to one hour. During the meeting, we tell each other, in turn, how we performed for the previous week, offering explanation for non-performance, and being challenged as necessary. We then set out the goals for the following week. All this is documented for reference during the next review session,

I cannot begin to quantify the value or explain how it has helped me improve my performance especially in the last one year.

Who then is an Accountability Partner?

An accountability partner is someone you trust to hold you to the standards that you set for yourself, or one who coaches another person to help him/ her keep a commitment. Well, he does not set your goals for you.

So, who would be a good accountability partner for you?

Below are some of the qualities of a good accountability partner.

• One who is not afraid to tell it as it is, without sugar coating. He should be able to ‘chase you out’ of every hiding place and help you face the fact that you have not kept your commitment. He should expose the lies we tell ourselves, and the excuses that keep us from meeting our objectives, even as motivation speaker and author Daniel Drubin says:

“Every excuse I ever heard made perfect sense to the person who made it. ”

• Challenging but not condemning or judging. Of course, you will fail many times except if the goals are not stretching enough. The accountability partner should not judge but make you see where you stand in your journey.
• One you can trust. Setting goals can be a very personal and challenging decision. You should find someone that will accept your aspiration, support it, and keep it between the two of you.
• Should confide their goals in you. Accountability partnership is a mutual exercise – it is mentorship or coaching if it is one-sided. Your accountability partner should also confide his goals in you.

For the accountability partnership process to succeed, we need to bear in mind that it is a process to help us attain our goals and not the goals. There is the tendency to prepare and look forward to the accountability partnership session, and heave a sigh of relief once it is done. We may unwittingly come away with a false sense of accomplishment, as if the review session is goal accomplishment.

You may also like this essay https://www.goal-setting-guide.com/the-role-of-an-accountability-partner-in-goal-achievement/

If you care enough about your goals and really want to succeed in achieving them, then you need to find an accountability partner. Do it today.

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