The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual and Organizational Accountability

success springs not from some new-fangled fad, paradigm, process, or program but from the willingness of an organization’s people to embrace full accountability for the results they seek.

The world’s societies suffer from the current cult of victimization because its subtle dogma holds that circumstances and other people prevent you from achieving your goals.

But even in the worst of such circumstances, people can’t move forward if they just sit around feeling powerless and blaming others for their misery.

from the willingness of an organization’s people to embrace full accountability for the results they seek.

Always solicit and strive to understand perspectives other than your own.

Since no one individual can mandate a perfectly accurate description of reality, you must draw from many other people's perceptions to imbue your reality with the deepest possible understanding of its many hues and shades.

A thin line separates success from failure, the great companies from the ordinary ones. Below that line lies excuse making, blaming others, confusion, and an attitude of helplessness, while above that line we find a sense of reality, ownership, commitment, solutions to problems, and determined action. While losers languish Below The Line, preparing stories that explain why past efforts went awry, winners reside Above The Line, powered by commitment and hard work.

Remember, getting stuck in the victim cycle is not bad, it’s just not effective. It keeps you from getting results.

left uncorrected in an organization, victim attitudes can erode productivity, competitiveness, morale, and trust to the point that correction becomes so difficult and expensive that the organization can never fully heal itself

When bad things unexpectedly happen, as they always do, or when serious errors in judgment occur, as they do more often than most of us wish to admit, accountable companies and their executives take action to control the damage and set a new course for achieving results.

Staying conscious means overcoming the auto-pilot mode and paying attention to everything that may relate to potential solutions, particularly those things that we take for granted or that we have come to accept as "the way we do things around here." Always challenge current assumptions and beliefs in an effort to break through to a new level of thinking that may take you out of your comfort zone.

It seems ironic that, in this information age, millions of people feel such a lack of control over their lives. Obviously, the communications revolution has done little to overcome, and may even have contributed to, a feeling of detachment and disconnectedness with circumstances and other people.

What else can I do to achieve the result?

It should come as no surprise that the real value and benefit of accountability stems from a person’s or an organization’s ability to influence events and outcomes before they happen.

Accountability: “A personal choice to rise above one’s circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary for achieving desired results—to See It, Own It, Solve It, and Do It.

people must abandon the past-oriented, blame-centered who-done-it definition of accountability.

The message: Sometimes you must be willing to burn all your other ships and grasp the helm of the one under your command. Doing so can stimulate the conviction and create the ownership necessary to get started on a new program of action that will help you rise above your circumstances.

As accountability deepens and people move Above The Line within the organization, a shift occurs from “tell me what to do,” to “here is what I am going to do, what do you think?”—a truly profound and empowering approach to getting results.

Jim Collins describes superior work environments this way: “When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results.” We

Whatever the wording, all our justifications for failure focus on “why it can’t be done,” rather than on “what else I can do.” To

To get Above The Line, and out of the blame game, you must climb the Steps To Accountability by adopting See It, Own It, Solve It, Do It attitudes.

While losers languish Below The Line, preparing stories that explain why past efforts went awry, winners reside Above The Line, powered by commitment and hard work.

at AES, the builder and operator of electricity-producing cogeneration plants, CEO Roger Sant implemented a “they busters” campaign with all the necessary buttons, posters, and flyers to help workers stop blaming the elusive “they” who always seem to stifle results. “They” represent all the finger-pointing, denying, ignoring, pretending, and waiting habits that grow up in organizations and keep people from taking charge of their own destinies.

Management wizard Jim Collins, best-selling author of Good to Great and Built to Last, argues that what must glaringly separate great companies from mediocre ones is the latter’s tendency “to explain away the brutal facts rather than to confront the brutal facts head-on.