What Trait Drives Business Success?

What drives your business success? Is it your ability to manage your time and the activities of others? Is it your marketing strategy and your ability to close sales? How about your unflappable optimism and commitment to the passion for what you do? All of these attributes are important but they are all dependent on the one thing that needs to be present in order to insure their individual and collective implementation—accountability!

Accountability is not mentioned much when it comes to discussing business building strategies. It’s less a tactic and more a standard. It’s what determines whether or not things get done.

In small business, accountability is especially hard to nail down because of whom you need to be accountable to—yourself!

For most of our lives, we have learned to be accountable to someone else; our parents, our teachers, our employers. You didn’t have to like it or agree with it but if you were responsible for doing it (taking out the trash, participating in class or managing some facet of your ongoing jog requirement) you were accountable. In my coaching business, accountability is a huge part of what enables my clients to be successful.

So why is it so hard for small business owners to be accountable to themselves? After all, everything we do for our business will ultimately benefit us, right? The benefits could be huge but if huge benefits were all that it took, we would all be superstars. Unfortunately, people tend to respond more when there’s consequences for not being accountable and the consequences are dictated by someone else. As the owner of the business, the consequences have to come from you.

If you struggle with things like meeting deadlines, keeping appointments, follow through or getting your employees to perform, you need to figure out how to hold yourself accountable. Systems for keeping yourself on task will help but they are not enough. Being accountable to yourself and your business requires a shift in perspective. Accountability is about recognizing what is most important, respecting your own word and valuing a level of integrity that reflects you as a person and a business owner.

You can improve your level of accountability and ultimately your business’s success by considering the following approaches.

Being accountable means deciding what you are not willing to compromise on in order to achieve business success.

We can’t be all things to all people so the idea that you can adjust your own values to suit someone else is a recipe for disappointment. Compromise has its place in many areas but not in upholding standards which represent the core of your business. If you are a plumber and advertise immediate service for water emergencies, putting a half-hearted effort into meeting appointments will travel faster that the radio commercials you’ve invested in. If accuracy is critical to maintain your credibility as a bookkeeper, having the accountant uncover a host of bookkeeping errors at tax time is not likely to retain clients. Whatever your position of integrity, guard it fiercely!

Accountability for business success means committing yourself to getting results.

Business owners, who get used to achieving what’s important to them, understand the necessity of completing what they start. Holding yourself accountable for seeing things through will have benefits across your entire business. It starts with deciding what’s important, planning out your tasks, staying focused on the process and being unwilling to accept not finishing, for any reason.

Set your own consequences for not being accountable to getting things done.

Guilt is a powerful deterrent against not measuring up. And while it’s not necessary to heap unreasonable amounts of guilt on yourself as an accountability measure, having a sense that letting yourself done is the biggest disappointment of all can keep you willing to see your efforts through to a successful conclusion.

The reason we tend to be more accountable to others is because they tend to see a level of value in us that we don’t always see in ourselves. [They] find it easier to hold us to a level of performance or behavior that we are capable of but aren’t always willing to strive for without compromise.

Without a strong feeling of accountability, much of what we could achieve goes unfulfilled. Being accountable to ourselves borders on a belief system that puts the responsibility we have embraced at the top of the list. If you believe your business has the potential for success, be willing to hold yourself accountable for the things that matter most. 

Of course, if accountability is beyond your grasp, do the next best thing—hire a coach to keep you on the straight and narrow. In the end, it’s totally worth it!