About Us
Our Founding
I founded Accountability Partners in 2005 after 25 plus years as a Small/Medium Business owner and F500 executive. During our growth years, there was nothing easy about the long days, stress of meeting payroll, hard decisions on sales, marketing and capital investments, normal (and some abnormal!) personnel issues, critical attention to detail and quality, high expectations for productivity, effective execution on sales, proper financial controls and accurate reporting.
During the course of this journey it became clear that our success wasn’t the result of one or two people (regardless of innovation or relationships). It came from the collective staff joining together in a concerted effort to learn, strive and create a positive working environment that allowed all of us to excel. I found the principle role of leadership to be clarifying and rallying our people toward a compelling vision, assigning attainable milestones and metrics, and develop exciting incentive programs. Effective leadership instills a performance culture that reward the doer’s and has consequences for missed deadlines and poor quality work. It allows high performers to thrive and take on more responsibility. Most importantly it protects us and our clients from mediocrity.
As I look back, there was great satisfaction in the financial aspects of successfully growing and selling a business, however it was the development of the people and consequently seeing their growth and positive impact on the organization that is the most satisfying legacy of our work. The Accountability Partner motto – and our reason for being engaged with clients today is – Building Organizations by Developing People. Cultivating a core group of high performers, leads to a greater group of high performers and so a high performing organization is built. There is nothing more thrilling than seeing people rise to increasing levels of achievement.
A Word of Caution
And as a word of caution, there is nothing more demoralizing to an “A” player than to see “C” and “D” players allowed to continue without improvement. Dedicate yourself to developing and challenging your staff. They will meet the challenge and propel both of you to success or will most likely leave on their own accord. If you don’t take assertive action, it may not be long before C or D Players is all you’ll have in your line-up.
The Inspiration For Our Name
I have yet to meet a person who was able to lead and inspire people on a long-term basis who didn’t embrace accountability. While reading Patrick Lencioni’s 5 Temptations of a CEO in December of 2004, character Charlie tells Andrew “without accountability, success is a matter of luck”. That rang true for me and crystallized the inspiration for the name Accountability Partners. I realize there are few in the world today that seek out accountability on their own volition, so my title of Chief Encouragement Officer is consciously chosen to communicate accountability isn’t a negative characteristic. Personal and Organizational accountability is a crucial characteristic to creating a high performance company, and is one that will make you stand above the crowd.
Today Accountability Partners exists to provide business resources to other entrepreneurs and executives striving to develop their people and grow their business. I’ve had the luxury of success as well as the painful teaching moments of failure. Owning and growing a business is hard and filled with fraught and indecision. It is not for the faint hearted and failure is more of a guarantee than success.
More About Accountability Partners
Find out more about our past experience, our leadership skills, strategic partnerships that benefit our clients, case studies that exhibit results, and Events we hold for our clients.