Accountability vs Ownership: The Shift That Frees CEOs

Accountability vs. Ownership is the difference between a team you have to chase and a team that runs without you. Most founders say, "My team isn't accountable," then add more check-ins, more dashboards, and more follow-up. It feels like leadership. It is actually founder dependency in disguise. Every time you chase a deadline, you become the accountability engine, and the company stays wired through you. In this solo episode, Gene Hammett breaks down why accountability is pushed from the outside and ownership is pulled from the inside. You will learn the signs your leadership team is complying instead of owning, the mistake founders make when they hold employees accountable, and the leadership shift that builds an ownership culture. Gene shares how CEOs move from managing tasks to giving real decision rights, so leaders own outcomes before you ask. If you want a business that runs without you, start here. Learn how at coreelevation.com. In This Episode, You'll Learn - The difference between accountability and ownership - Why accountability often creates more work for the CEO - How ownership creates initiative and pride - Why founders become bottlenecks in growing companies - Why employees need decision-making authority to take ownership - How to transfer responsibility without creating dependency - How to build a culture that encourages ownership - Why ownership matters when scaling a company - How team ownership can contribute to greater business value - What founders can do to move from managing tasks to leading people Key Takeaway ✔️Accountability means people do what they have to do. ✔️Ownership means people do what they believe needs to be done. ✔️The goal isn't to build a company where the CEO constantly checks whether work is getting done. ✔️The goal is to build a company where capable people take responsibility for the outcome and have the authority to make it happen. ✔️That's the shift from accountability to ownership, and it's one of the most important shifts a growing company can make. About Gene Hammett Gene Hammett works with growth-minded companies and leaders to help them scale from $5 million to $20 million and beyond. His work focuses on leadership, founder freedom, team performance, and building companies that can grow beyond the founder. Resources & Next Steps 📘 Founder Freedom Download the book for free and learn more about breaking through founder dependency: https://book.coreelevation.com/ 🎙️ Founder Freedom Strategy Call If you're a founder who has built something significant but still feels too deeply involved in the day-to-day, Gene offers a free 30-minute strategy call to explore what's keeping you stuck. https://links.myleadpro.io/widget/bookings/founder-freedom-call

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  You keep telling your team to be more accountable. You keep hoping that accountability will become a driving force inside your business. But I'm here to tell you that you're probably looking for the wrong thing. You don't want accountability. You want ownership. Today, we're going to talk about the distinction between the two to help you lead your team and the company of your dreams. Hi, my name's Gene Hammond. I love being able to share insights from my coaching practice, working with fast growth leaders, many of them on the Inc 5000, growing their businesses through chaos and through changes and shifts in leadership. And every business that gets it realizes that it's not their people that need to change. It's they need to lead better.

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  And so I'm going to share with you this concept of the distinction between accountability and ownership. So it'll help you create more of what you want in your business and the company of your dreams. So if you're curious about the work we've done, you're curious about how you can go a little bit deeper with with what we do. This is our latest book, Get Founder Freedom. It's absolutely free. Just go to getfounderfreedom.com. Inside it, you will find the eight freedoms that you need to unlock to get to that business of your dreams. And again, for now, it's completely free. Just go to getfounderfreedom.com. So let's dive into this whole concept of accountability and ownership. I want you to think about this for a second. After my interviews with over a thousand CEOs, we're right at 1,300 episodes or just over that now inside the podcast.

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  And I love what we're doing, but I'm learning from each one of these leaders. Sometimes I'm learning the good. Sometimes I'm learning the challenges they have. I learned through my clients and I share that back with you. And sometimes we got to make a distinction between things because we use them interchangeably. And accountability is very different than ownership. So I don't think they're interchangeable, but there is often some overlap. And so if you are saying that you want more accountability, what I know for a fact is you don't want to be chasing people around. Did you do the work? Is it the right work? Is it unquality? Is it whatever? You don't want to chase anyone around. You want them to take pride in their work.

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  And that's another way to say take real ownership of doing a job well done, doing it right, solving a problem, innovating something. I was just telling a story earlier today. I used to work summers with my brother and he was a bricklayer. And I would carry bricks for the most part. They didn't give me any real work to do, but I had a small sense of pride around the work and the houses that we worked on. Now, I know that's happening for everyone out there. I've worked in marketing and I would see something on a campaign and I'm like, I was a part of that. That's a sense of ownership and pride. That's what you want to connect to with your people. Now, I'm going to go over just a few things just to show you the difference between accountability and ownership.

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  One is accountability is pushed and ownership is pulled. What I mean by that is when you think about

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  things that aren't getting done, you're always pushing people to get it done. Whereas when they, in those projects that they take some real ownership in, they're pushing you, right? They're pulling through the market because they're, they don't have to be hounded. They don't even have to be asked. In accountability, we do things because it's a part of our job. It's because we were asked to do it. It's our responsibility. Ownership is beyond responsibility. It is about identity. Keep that in mind. If you have to check on it, you don't own it, right? Because you're constantly probing and asking. Another point behind this is accountability trap makes you the engine. If you have to be the one who says, did you get it done and is it right?

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  Then you will become the bottleneck of this. I had a client of mine that that reviewed the work of every one of his employees. And he was spent 60% of his time every week. It's about 30 hours a week, just reviewing the work of his team. And he had about 20 employees and I get it. There was a reason for it. His work went to the IRS and it had to be, use the word perfect over and over and over. And I stepped back and said, well, what if you couldn't do that? What if someone else in your business had to do it? He knew right away who would do it. Fast forward a year, he only got pulled into the harder things. And they were taking that entire process. They mapped out what needed to be done, who was going to do it, how it got done. And he was almost detached from it completely.

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  It took a while, a lot longer than he thought, but they met that project with a sense of ownership, not accountability. They took it off his plate so that he could focus on what was next. If you're listening to this show, chances are you're a founder who's built something significant, but you're still too deep in the day to day to see the path forward. That's exactly what the Founder Freedom Strategy Call is for. It's free. It's 30 minutes with me personally. And we'll pinpoint exactly what's keeping you stuck and what you need to do about it. Book your time with me at my personal URL, schedulewithgene.com. Now, back to the podcast. Ownership does require decision rights. It's not just about pressuring someone to do it.

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  You've got to help them be able to make the key decisions and you have to give them the authority to make those decisions. So you want to step back from anything that you want people to have more ownership is on. And you figure out what decision matrix or rubics need to be created. You can create them yourself. You can create them with your employees. It depends on the level they're at. But you want to make sure that you can start handing off the decisions that go along with this. Because if there's no decisions made, they can't take ownership. They come back to you and say, what do I do next? And that's not the point. That's not the freedom that you're looking for as a CEO. Another one is accountability doesn't disappear. It changes hands.

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  So if you're the one holding people accountable, then your, your business will grow at a certain pace. But when you begin to let go of that and you have other people take ownership of those projects and they're holding their team members accountable. We'll say that you can't expect everyone to feel a sense of ownership. But I will say that, that you can create a culture, because I have other content in other places. I'm not going to go in this direction, but there are six elements of ownership that you can create. And none of them have to do with pay, money. It's all about the, the, how you treat people and how you organize things and how you create the culture around ownership. And I just remind this to you, like, you're not going to get everyone to feel like owners because some people just want a job.

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  They just want to show up, get, do their work, get a paycheck. But for those that do want a sense of ownership, you've got to nurture that. You've got to lead that through them. And finally, ownership is what buyers pay for. So a big component in the book that we, we mentioned earlier, Get Founder Freedom, is how do you create a more valuable company? Well, if you have a bunch of employees out there that are weak at accountability or they're okay at accountability, your company will be worth it a certain amount. But if they have, if you have a group of team members that take real ownership and pride in what they're doing and their identity is connected to it, then you will have a much different value on your organization. And that enterprise value is based on how you lead your team and the culture you create around it.

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  Because they're not buying you, they're buying a team. They're buying a business that handles these things. And the more valuable business is one where people take ownership. So I'm wrapping this up for you because I really, I believe truly about this. I was just got a call with a client who was talking about, I want more accountability. And one thing that I had to be hard hitting on this, this is behind the scenes in coaching. I can't tell you the client name out of confidentiality, but I will tell you, they had let something ride that was supposed to be a part of their work for many, many months, almost a year. And now they're frustrated that it's not getting done. I said, well, you didn't have accountability and structures in place and you certainly didn't get them to take ownership of this. And that's on you as a leader.

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  I share that with you because I don't know who on your team is not performing and not doing what they're supposed to be doing. But you have to look at yourself and say, how do I lead them more powerfully? How do I show up differently so that I can get a different result? That is what you can control. You cannot control them. You can lead them, but you cannot control them to be, to more accountability or control them to take ownership. You, they have to want it inside. And that's one of the big distinctions between accountability and ownership. Ownership, they want it. Accountability, they do it because they have to. Hi, my name's Gene Hammond. I work with all kinds of businesses to help them grow from 5 million through 20 million beyond. And I want to help you too. If there's anything I can help you out, please let me know.

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  And if you're curious about the work that we do, sign up for our next training at training.coreelevation.com. If you do that, you will really understand what it takes to create the business of your dreams and move from founder to CEO. It's absolutely free. Just go to training.coreelevation.com. When you think of growth and you think of leadership, think of growth thinking. As always, leave a courage. We'll see you next time.