The Age of Un-accountability.
August 15, 2007 on 9:33 am
Filed Under:Web
I never would have thought that I would live to hear a politician credited with inspiring some accountability, but in “Al Gore and Web Analytics“, Jason Burby wrote about how seeing Gore’s film on Global Warming got him thinking about people taking more risks in their objectives, and being accountable for the outcome.
This really hit home for me, having had the majority of my career experience in a large company and experiencing first-hand the many ways that the buck can be passed. To this day I still wonder what it was exactly that kept me around that place, when I would routinely challenge our extremely busy Project Manager to a game of “horse” on the Nerf hoop and actually shot the VP in the chest with my Nerf Dart Gun.
I suppose if I had to think about it, it was the fact that not only did I push the boundaries of some of my more ambiguously directed projects, but that I was also 100% accountable for each and every facet of them. More often than not, probably because the Bad News makes headlines, it seemed that I was in that Project Manager or VP’s office, explaining why we had a significant drop in Google traffic, or why certain report sales were down
It was only well after I left, and was putting together my references and resume, that I realised how much money I made that place with my constant and ever-expanding SEO project. Quite simply, they would have been idiots to let me go and, testament to their good natures, instead kept me on in spite of my childish and distracting habits (which were so much damn fun I thought I would wet myself some days). Hell, these guys even gave me bonuses and profit-sharing!
Upton Sinclair, and Jason Burby, are right. If you don’t know or care about something, and aren’t PAID to do either, then you probably aren’t going to take it upon yourself to do anything differently.
“Think outside the box and take full accountability” is about as cliché-laden as you can get.
But does that mean it isn’t 100% true?