I’ve been running a series of seminars just for Pure Bookkeeping Licensees with the focus on Leadership and the other important domains of their business. As the leader, your job is to inspire and unite the team (even if that’s just you) but often as great bookkeepers (technicians) we get stuck in one domain - production (the bookkeeping). This often leaves little time and energy to inspire anyone, least of all yourself. However if you tell someone else what your goals are or the projects you have planned, you are more likely to do what it takes to achieve them because you have made yourself accountable.
In Pete Cook’s book “Implement” he explains there are four levels of accountability and the stakes rise with each level:
• Private i.e. personal integrity, the ability to keep promises to ourselves
• Peer i.e. promises to your friends or colleagues
• Positional i.e. promises to someone in a position of power
• Public i.e. telling the “world”
Pete explains that the skill with accountability is to pick the most effective level for you. So when you set your goals for next year up the ante a bit by telling someone else to make yourself accountable to them. But choose carefully. Matt Church, Thought Leader, says “sometimes your plans need to be held at arms length from the well meaning advice of people whose major claim to fame is that they have an opinion. Don’t ever let turkeys judge eagles.
Article by Debbie Roberts
