Accountability Case

Accountability throughout the entire organization is critical to its prosperity and survival. It is a management’s job to set up rigid standards that put the right people in the right position and remove ruthlessly and immediately anyone in the team who is less than outstanding. There is a ruthless aspect to making management decision assertively and unsentimentally. Doing this holds the entire chain of command accountable for its performance. Failure to do so will result in creating an environment where mediocrity and incompetence affect all levels of management positions and ambitious young leaders are unable to grow. Good management holds all levels of leaders accountable for their performance at all times. The high standards in accountability start by demoting leaders who are slacking or underperforming.

Over the past decades, the best example of deteriorating accountability, as Thomas E. Ricks suggested in What Ever Happened to Accountability, is seen through the change in the US army from World War II to the Vietnam War. By seeing how the military downgraded into a third-rate power, we receive a lesson in the importance of accountability. This lesson applies to a company’s management. Ricks illustrates his point by starting with one of the most prominent figures of high standards and accountability in the US army history, George C. Marshall. Marshall is famous not for being charming or charismatic, but for setting strict standards of army practice and getting the right people in the right jobs. He transformed the US military from a small, weak force into a globe-spanning, disciplined force by implementing incentives that created high job performance. After World War II, the whole incentive system was undermined. In the Korean and Vietnam Wars, very few military personnel were relieved of duties due to their incompetence. Since the ineffectual officers stayed in their positions forever and top management tolerated corruption and dishonesty, it is