Several years ago, I joined a startup with an engineering team in disarray. Unfocused and undisciplined, each team seemed to have different priorities. The SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) team faced high turnover, with tenure averaging less than nine months. Responsibilities and skills were mismatched, causing delays and disruptions. The CEO's directive to me was clear: “You have to hold these teams accountable! Make sure they’re putting in the hours to get the work done.” 

I understood his frustration; the company was investing heavily in teams that weren’t delivering. However, equating “accountability” with working nights and weekends was misguided. Research1 shows that working beyond 50 or 55 hours significantly impacts cognitive ability, creativity, and health, leading to burnout, low morale, and turnover. Earlier in my career, I faced the same situation, being directed to “hold them accountable,” I remember thinking, “Hold them accountable to what?” 

This question motivated me to understand accountability and how to instill a sense of accountability and responsibility in teams to help them collaborate more effectively and perform at a higher level. As a boss, it’s not about me “holding my team accountable.” It’s about creating an environment and defining a culture where accountability is ingrained in how the team works. My team members aren’t only accountable to me but to each other, their team, the company, the customers, and themselves. In this article, I want to share how you can set a foundation for building an environment that fosters this level of shared accountability.

Instead of demanding that the team work more hours, I’ve learned that for long-term success, what’s needed is a definition of what accountability means to the team. This definition comes from establishing clear expectations, shared values, and fostering a culture of ownership and responsibility. I will focus on expectations and values because they are the cornerstones of accountability, but first, I want to delve into culture.

Culture

A strong and positive culture is what makes great teams great. A definition of culture is “the shared beliefs, values, practices, and behaviors rewarded within a group or organization.” You can think of culture as a newly tilled plot of land. You can let nature take its course and grow wild, or you can plant a garden, select what you want to grow, tend to it, nurture it, and produce a more deliberate, sustainable, and bountiful crop. Likewise, you can let culture grow organically or be intentional about your desired culture.

Building strong organizational cultures includes setting clear values and expectations but also requires: 

  • Leading by example
  • Hiring for cultural fit
  • Encouraging open communication
  • Recognizing and rewarding positive behaviors
  • Providing growth opportunities
  • Promoting work-life balance
  • Fostering team cohesion and 
  • Continuously evaluating and adapting based on feedback and evolving needs

As I said above, expectations and values contribute to establishing the team's culture and form the foundation for defining and establishing team accountability. Below, I’ll explore the role defined expectations and values play in establishing accountability. Let’s start with expectations.

Expectations

Clear expectations establish the ground rules so everyone knows what’s required of them. Expectations include job responsibilities, standards, and a shared understanding of how work should be done. 

I believe expectations should be set using a top-down approach, defined, at least initially, by leadership but open to input from the team and revised as appropriate. I tend to provide two sets of written expectations to my teams. The first is what they should expect from me and other managers (essentially “what we will do for you”), and the other is what we should expect from each other. 

Below are examples of expectations from my world of software development, both to make what I’m outlining more concrete and to provide you with a template to use as a starting point. The “Managers’ Commitment” is what the team should expect from management, and “How We’ll Work Together” sets the expectations of working collectively.

Managers’ Commitment:

“We will strive to create an environment where teams and individuals can succeed through a commitment to shared values, an agile mindset, continuous improvement, and delivering the highest value to our customers in collaboration with stakeholders. Everyone will understand their career path and how to achieve it. We will provide open and honest feedback, welcome input and feedback from others, and commit to supporting ongoing learning and development.”

How We’ll Work Together:

  1. Show up ready to work: Be invested in your work, take pride in your accomplishments, and strive to make a meaningful impact. Understand and question how your work aligns with the company’s goals and objectives.
  2. Don’t write code until requirements, mockups, and acceptance criteria are provided: Before starting to code, ensure you have well-defined requirements, mockups, and acceptance criteria that stakeholders have validated. Participate in the discovery and definition phases to align expectations and set the stage for successful development.
  3. Read and Write Documentation: Thoroughly read relevant documentation before starting your task. Create and maintain clear, concise, up-to-date documentation to facilitate knowledge sharing and efficient development.
  4. Production issues are the top priority: Address production issues with urgency; don’t panic or rush. Work together to resolve problems swiftly, reinforcing teamwork and resilience. Regroup afterward to align on how to prevent reoccurrence.
  5. Deliver on commitments: Meet commitments by delivering work on time, adhering to requirements and quality standards, and maintaining effective communication. Build trust and accountability through consistent delivery.
  6. Coding Standards and Definition of Done: Follow coding standards for readability, maintainability, and consistency. Before making a commit, ensure the code meets the "Definition of Done.”

With a clearer understanding of expectations, let’s explore values and their role.

Values

Values serve as guiding principles for how team members should conduct themselves and work together. These values shape the team's culture and decision-making processes, influencing behavior and attitudes.

Values are best when defined by the team using a bottom-up approach. Their development is best when led by an experienced neutral third-party facilitator. Leadership’s involvement should be limited to explaining what they’re looking for from the facilitator and having the opportunity to review and comment on a draft before it’s finalized. 

It’s worth noting that psychological safety is required for this process to succeed—if you haven’t established trust with your team, you must address that first.

Like the examples of expectations above, an example of shared values here will help to provide clarity and can be used as a guide for defining your values.

Software Engineering Team Values:

  1. Missionaries, not Mercenaries: Be deeply invested in your work, take pride in your accomplishments, and strive to make a meaningful impact. Understand and question how your work aligns with the company’s goals and objectives.
“Teams of missionaries are engaged, motivated, have a deep understanding of the business context, and tangible empathy for the customer. Teams of mercenaries feel no real sense of empowerment or accountability, no passion for the problem to be solved, and little real connection with the actual users and customers.”
~ Marty Cagan
  1. Teamwork over the individual: Prioritize team success through active collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing. Leverage each other's strengths to overcome challenges and achieve common goals.
  2. Joint ownership of code: Share responsibility for the codebase's quality, maintainability, and improvement. Adhere to coding standards and contribute to the codebase's collective success.
  3. Everyone has a role in quality: Quality is everyone's responsibility, from defining requirements to writing code and testing. To maintain high standards, identify and address quality issues proactively.
  4. Critique the work, not the person: feedback should be focused on the specific job or task being evaluated rather than on the individual who performed the work.
  5. Continuous improvement in everything we do: Commit to continuous improvement in all aspects of work, including products and processes. Seek ways to enhance efficiency and effectiveness to deliver greater value to customers and stakeholders. Take the time to learn from our mistakes.

With the expectations and values established and communicated, let’s explore the impact on accountability.

Accountability

With these expectations and values defined, accountability is now much more than simply working longer hours. With expectations and values defined, shared accountability comes from everyone knowing their role, what’s expected of them, and how they will succeed individually and as a team. Accountability is part of the culture of how the team works, collaborates, delivers value, and grows. 

As a bonus, managers have defined criteria to measure performance and behavior and can use this framework to guide coaching, provide feedback, and develop performance reviews. It’s much easier to hold people accountable when you know what you’re holding them accountable to.

Also worth noting is establishing and communicating these expectations and values helps ensure that accountability measures are applied consistently and fairly. Team members who understand the basis for feedback and coaching are much more likely to be open to and accept the input. By defining expectations and values, the team is set up for long-term success, the cornerstones for defining culture have been set, and an environment where individuals and teams can thrive and grow has been established.

Keep Going

Don’t stop after you’ve defined the values and expectations. Continue to revisit them, discuss them with the team, bake them into your onboarding process, and update or revise them as needed. Live and breathe your values, and remember to have fun with it. Everything doesn’t have to be so serious. Inject some soul into your culture.

The Lancet, June 2021, “Long Working Hours and Health” & Human Capital Innovation, April 2023, “Why Working After Hours May Decrease Productivity”