The relationship between trust and accounting for what matters

Here’s a thought: no one can trust an organization that only accounts for a fraction of what it does. You wouldn’t entrust the design of a new school to a firm that was only willing to account for the fact that they are good at bringing projects under budget. What about student centered design? Energy efficiency? Aesthetics? Environmental impact? Etc. To trust an organization requires that the organization account for all the things that matter.

Parents and communities regularly tell us that there are about thirty things that matter to them that have the capacity to build stakeholder trust. Keep them safe. Make sure students have friends and feel connected to others. Teach them empathy. Support creativity. Etc. Somewhere around 18 or 19 they get to basic academics, not because basic academics are unimportant, but because there are a great many things that are just as important.

And yet what is the accountability landscape in most schools? An accountability that accounts at best for only a fraction of what matters.

If public schools need to be trusted by society—and they do—then this is not the formula by which to make that happen. This is a formula that is, in fact, guaranteed to see that it doesn’t. It wouldn’t matter if the accounting offered the most perfect and accurate accounting for that fraction of what happens in a school—it would still violate the formula by which trust is created, which is a dangerous place to be.

This is why we are so passionate about making sure every school leader has the capacity to account for what matters. Schools need to be the most trusted of our public instutions, but that can’t happen until accounting for what matters becomes the norm.

What is accountability really?

I ask that question a great deal in my work. Specifically, when I ask educators about how it is done formally, what I hear suggests it is both everything and nothing, the end and the means, hated but grudgingly tolerated, and a fete accompli. It often sounds to me like educators are describing an amorphous multi-tentacled entity that appears annually to render its negative judgments on schools, but then slinks back into some dark, inaccessible hiding place that allows it to avoid scrutiny or even identification.

Being amorphous doesn't mean it doesn’t have weight because of course it does. Each state has a formula for compliance (at the behest of the Feds) into which it dumps standardized test data and perhaps graduation rates or attendance. The formula arranges schools, from the school deemed to be the greatest of them all down to the worst, and then parses that scale into labels or grades. The schools at the top usually get a plaque of some sorts confirming their greatness, and the schools at the bottom are told to get their act together, often accompanied by sanctions.

The fact that the judgments correlate with the socioeconomics of a neighborhood—a fact that for any researcher worth their salt would cause them to say, whoa, wait a minute, are we judging school effectiveness or stating the obvious, that poor people have it tougher than rich people—never seems to bother the people making the rules. At least not enough to question what we’re doing.

What it boils down to is what passes for school accountability is in fact an amorphous $2 billion (at least) annual boondoggle that helps us see where rich and poor people live. By any stretch of the imagination, that is not accountability.

So, what is accountability, really? I’ve been investigating that question for the better part of two decades. Early on, I realized that answering it is the key to getting it right.

And the key to answering the question lies in asking why it is we ever account for what we do in the first place. Why do we tell others about our efforts? What is it we want them to feel as a result? How is it we want them to think about us?

We could spend hours in workshops working through any number of responses (and it’s a worthwhile exercise, if you have the time). Then if we stared at those responses (which I have now done many times) and tried to identify some purpose or motive, one will occur far more than any other.

Trust.

It's in almost every response. I account for what I do so that you will trust me. You do the same. Organizations account to their stakeholders in the hope that those stakeholders will trust that the organization will have their best interests at heart. That desire and need for trust is everywhere you look when you think about why we would ever account to anyone regarding our efforts. We account for what we do because we care and need others to care as well.

Accountability is far different than selling or spinning a narrative, so please don’t confuse them. Neither of those builds trust. In fact, they can often have the opposite effect. Selling and spinning are to compel an action, regardless of trust, sometimes even in the face of it not existing. Selling and spinning tell only part of the story, the part they want you to hear. Trust requires more. Trust requires an accounting based in fact and truth.

Accountability, at its best, is a truth-telling trust-building machine.

But what of those, I am often asked, whom we must hold to account, those whom we don’t perceive as being sufficiently accountable? What is it we want from them? What is it we are lacking that causes the perception that they are not being accountable?

It’s that same word, trust, but an absence of it: we don’t trust them, and what we are in effect asking for are efforts that will allow us to trust, or a change from the present to conditions in which trust might be possible.

And how is trust built?

One step at a time. Gradually, one interaction, or transaction at a time. Trust requires an accumulation of numerous intentional actions until one day it feels as if it was always there, even when we know that was never the case.

That won’t happen accidentally. Hope won’t get you there. Doing nothing is the surest way to ensure trust never occurs. Talking at people, flinging reams of data at them, or saying “trust me” aren’t steps that get you closer to trust.

Accounting for your efforts honestly, accurately, and understandably, is the most important thing we do to build trust, both within an organization and without. That requires purpose, intent, and effort, just like planning, strategy, and execution, three of the disciplines required to be a leader.

Which brings us around to answering that question, what is accountability?

Accountability in its purest and yet most pragmatic form is the trust-building discipline of leadership. It is that plain, that simple, and that powerful. It is the discipline that enables us to account for what we do and as a result, over time, be trusted to do it some more. Institutions that lack such a discipline will be sorely lacking in their capacity to build trust with their stakeholders. That would be a difficult spot to be in.

In schools we give tests to students, drop the scores into a formula, and spit out an annual judgment.

That sound to anybody like we’re doing school accountability right? Like a trust-building exercise? Like anything resembling what accountability could and should be? Especially in an institution as critical as public education?

I didn’t think so.

It is not possible to corrupt the idea of accountability any more thoroughly than in what has been done to schools. And the consequences of that are enormous. Without a meaningful accountability in schools public trust can’t and won’t happen. Let that sink in for a moment, because what it means is that every day we don’t account for what we do in a way that builds trust, this institution of public education is closer and closer to not existing, and that would be a terrible thing for the nation.

That isn’t to say every school is great and that if we could just tell the truth every school would be seen positively. That isn’t true, and we all know it. But what we have now is an accountability system that cannot tell the truth about any school, the good or the bad. The absence of trust that produces leads the public to believe that the institution of public education should be perceived negatively, or that it might closet to beyond saving, or perhaps not even worth it.

Here’s the bright spot. We don’t need those who got it wrong to get it right. Accountability in its proper form was always there for us to take advantage of, regardless of policy, and it still is. Accounting for what happens in a school is as necessary today as it was when the current system started, perhaps more so given the mess it’s made. And it doesn’t require permission. It doesn’t even require that you tell anyone what you are up to. It just requires leadership.

We won’t solve this trust issue overnight but rather, over time. But we’ll never solve it if we don’t start accounting for our truths in a manner that is believable. And understandable. We need to build and recover trust one step or transaction at a time until the accumulation is such that the public can wonder why it didn’t exist before.

Fixing accountability and putting a school on the road to trust just requires a leader willing to do it. That’s remarkable when you think about it. And it gives me hope.

Accountability and Implementation

A good friend recently pointed out that the problems we help educators solve at bravEd are problems of implementation as much as they are problems of what it is school leaders should account for. I agree.

I like to think of it like this: every school leader I know wants to implement the right things, but in order for that to happen each school leader needs to account for what they do in such a way that they can be trusted to do those right things. After all, the right things are not always the easiest to see or do. Many decisions can feel contradictory to those outside a school. And because oftentimes a school leader will rightly need to address the latest set of controversies in the popular press in such a way that they will only please some of the stakeholders, trust is the only way for a leader to survive that sort of thing.

One other implementation problem my friend pointed out is that organizations that punish non-compliance rather than reward effectiveness are going to kill their chances at implementing efforts designed to improve the organization. Sound familiar? Punishing non-compliance as if that also represents effectiveness—which is what school accountability in its current form is designed to do—removes effectiveness from the equation, leaving the worst of bureaucratic processes as the day-to-day work of the organization. If that is how a school in fact operates, that school is going to miss every meaningful goal regarding a student’s needs. Not a good place to be.

I suppose I see implementation and accounting for our efforts as two pistons in an engine that done well kill the compliance mentality and focus an organization on its mission. Each time implementation or accountability fires properly it tees the other up to do the same. We account for what we do in a way that is deeply meaningful to stakeholders, that creates trust in the organization, which can then get behind implementations based on what will make the organization more effective (and less bureaucratic), even when they aren't well understood. And the better we implement the right things, the more our accountings and the evidence behind them will reflect that and the resulting trust will then increase the capacity for future implementations.

This process is particularly important for complex organizations that do complex things, as most stakeholders will be unlikely to grasp the details in an implementation and must therefore trust in those that understand them. Trust is the lifeblood of complex organizations, and accounting for effectiveness and the implementation of what will make you more effective is the only way to get it.

My friend also pointed out that this process can have some pretty immediate effects—something I’ve personally seen in my work. That’s why I like the engine/piston metaphor—it can force movement in a surprisingly small amount of time.

One other note: this engine metaphor and the way school accountability occurs in its current form should be seen as two parts of a Venn diagram that never intersect and should never intersect. Punishing non-compliance and pretending that represents a path to solid implementations, which current school accountability is designed to do, is a surefire way to reduce schooling to a rote set of steps that serves no one. Accounting/Implementation/Accounting etc. is a process that can do just the opposite through the trust it creates. Which is why we should do it.

Educational Ice Cream

The challenge in talking about educational accountability is twofold. First is that no one in their right mind would suggest that they are unwilling to be accountable for the work they do, especially when that work is as important as the education of a child.

But second, the way accountability has been done in education is so embarrassingly dumb that it isn’t an accountability worth being accountable to or for. That leaves educators in the untenable position of saying that they are happy to be accountable, just not in the way that states and Federal government want them to be accountable. Which leaves educators vulnerable to accusations of wanting to cherry pick among systems for the one that puts them in the best possible light. Or of not wanting to be accountable at all.

Let’s be clear about how dumb the current system is. It is something done punitively and authoritatively. It is done to schools by those outside schools, most of whom lack any expertise regarding educational processes. Its negative judgments are concentrated on the poorest communities. It is based largely on standardized test scores, which few understand, especially the policy makers making the rules. It creates judgments that differ a great deal from what the educators in a building know to be true. It comes with sufficiently negative judgments that it interferes with and often corrupts what educators know to be best practice. It is stressful and forever the 600 lb. gorilla in every school. It uses complex compliance-based formulas to assign labels. Almost no one would classify what passes for educational accountability as a system that promotes anything resembling excellence.

In short, what passes for educational accountability follows a formula that has been roundly rejected by virtually every other profession for the simple fact that if understanding an organization and its efforts is the goal, this won’t get you there.

The challenge in talking about fixing educational accountability is also twofold. First, the paradigm of test—judge—punish is so powerful that improving accountability almost always occurs under the assumption that standardized testing is a fete accompli, something as commensurate with accountability as the terms bunny and hare are to each other. 99% of the effort that goes into trying to fix state and federal accountability programs and policies is about trying to lessen the negative impact of a demonstrably bad (dumb) system. Or find a better way to test. Or tweak the formulas to hurt a little less, which of course will be met with accusations of (ironically) dumbing down the system.

And second, it has proven almost impossible to imagine something other than our compliance-driven test-based accountabilities. Whatever the reason, there has never been a concerted and sustained effort to ask and research what accountability could have and should have looked like, and then ask how we might move towards it. I interact with people all the time about a future state of educational accountability, and it never ceases to amaze me how challenging it is to see beyond narrow educational metrics and thinking that compliance with them somehow signals effectiveness.

All that weight anchored to a single phrase, educational accountability, means that the instant the phrase is invoked so too is the negativity and the sense that getting out from underneath it will be near impossible. That weight makes it challenging even to imagine what something else might look like. Or that there could even be a something else.

When I say educational accountability I’m talking about the most transformational of all the leadership disciplines, more capable of supporting a great work environment, creating trust between an organization and its stakeholders, and helping to shape strong organizations well into the future than any of them. Do it well and the big issues that seemed unsolvable in the past can become solvable going forward. No other leadership discipline can make that claim.

I’m talking about the way great organizations of all stripes account for what they do such that it leads and guides them as effectively as possible into an uncertain future.

Does that sound like what currently passes for educational accountability?

Real accountability looks nothing like what currently passes for educational accountability. It doesn’t need or require standardized test scores. It doesn’t require census metrics. It is not data-led. It is high stakes, but its goals are not punitive. It is based upon the hopes and dreams parents have for their children, or in slightly different terms, on the benefits parents expect for having entrusted their children’s lives and educations to a school. It tells the truth. It focuses on the future. It is easy to understand by every single stakeholder.

However, when I invoke the phrase, educational accountability, and start to point to the research that outlines a better way to do it, what people are understandably conditioned to hear is that I’m yet one more person with a slick strategy to help a school avoid sanctions, or I’m offering a different test or data point, or I’m claiming some policy tweak will help make a lousy system a little less lousy. Because up to this point that is all anyone has offered. And none of those, to be frank, is worth a moment of anybody’s time. If that were what I was really offering, you should ignore me.

I know this is how people view the phrase educational accountability because of the thousands of people I’ve asked what they believed what was about to happen when they first walked into one of my courses or seminars. Their answers are almost the same: they expected to hear yet one more way to deal with the current accountability mess, and that given the choice they would rather be anywhere else. Again, if I were in their shoes, I would feel the exact same way.

My goal going forward is to help people see at the outset something very different indeed. I’m better at it than I was, but I’m not there yet.

When I talk about making educational accountability right, what I am signaling is the need for something entirely different than the corruption currently claiming that name. I am arguing for accountability that is good for schools, students, parents, and communities, which is a far cry from what we have. I’m accusing the current system being so bad and poorly conceived that it cannot be salvaged, but also—and this is a bright spot—of being so narrow and short-sighted that you can run a great accountability alongside and eclipse it, meaning we don’t need a policy change in order to make a huge dent in the problem—although make no mistake—a policy change is absolutely the goal.

And I’m stating, as loudly as I can, that if the public understood the technical details of what a standardized test score is designed to do and as a result, could see what it cannot also do, they would reject it as an accountability tool outright, as a terrible and stupid mistake. It needs to become clear that trying to use standardized testing as an accountability tool is akin to trying to pound a square peg into a round hole with a mackerel. I hope that image stays with you because it really is that dumb.

When I talk about making educational accountability right, it is not through a set of acronyms or quippy phrases that were created to sell books or consulting hours. Rather, accountability is an almost universal function in organizations, and when done well, follows a handful of underlying frameworks, each of them replete with common sense. Doing accountability right requires learning those commonsense frameworks, a shift in mindset regarding what accountability is and is not, and a few hours a month. Accountability is not supposed to be your job, or the 600 lb. gorilla. Rather, it is how to account for your work and effectiveness, including how you intend to be effective going forward. That is, as I said, high stakes to be sure, just as it should be with any and all work that is meaningful and worthwhile.

For someone who now researches and studies accountability and has discovered its wondrous possibilities for improving the health of organizations, meeting the needs of stakeholders, shaping the organization for the future, and making it a great place to work, the fact that I have to start with the word, accountability, automatically puts me at a disadvantage by bringing with it its mountains of baggage. A disadvantage I must spend weeks and sometimes months trying to overcome.

The alternative is to find a different word, but that puts me at risk of being accused of not caring about accountability. Of being an apologist for under or poor performance, or of not caring about kids. That would put me outside the conversation and prevent my mission of solving this accountability mess once and for all.

So, I’m not going to dismiss the term, but rather, embrace it. But I need every educator to meet me halfway, so that we can start with a shared set of assumptions at the outset. And here’s a strategy to do that. Every time I say the phrase educational accountability the first few times we talk, or you read something I wrote, please read it as educational ice cream. Ice cream makes people happy. It's delicious. We’re happier to have than to not. We can look forward to the next flavor of the month. We leave our experiences with ice cream feeling better than before we had it. Any negative feelings we have about the calories are almost always offset by how good it is.

Educational ice cream creates the right denotative flair for that old and weighted term accountability, which can serve as an emotional placeholder until I can show you how truly transformational real accountability can be.

And I like saying that I’m something of an expert when it comes to educational ice cream. My bet is that our conversations will start off at a more advanced stage, and on a more positive note, which gets us much closer at the outset from discovering that a better accountability really is out there.

What accountability and the Supreme Court say about schools

The recent situation with the Supreme Court is yet another example of what happens when an institution does not address the discipline of accountability appropriately—trust in that institution will suffer mightily.

Being able to account for one’s efforts isn’t just a nice to have. Nor is it something ever well done when imposed from the outside (for the obvious reason that the non-technical outsiders are at a serious lack of understanding how best to do accountability within highly technical institutions). Rather, if trust in the institution is a goal that will only come from within a richly wrought accountability discipline, one capable of telling the unvarnished truth to the organization’s stakeholders to the point that it compels trust and actions deemed appropriate in their eyes.

And creating that accountability must be the job of the institution.

It does amaze me at the arrogance of important organizations (like what the Supreme Court has been absolutely guilty of doing) that put out the “trust me” defense, much as the Supreme Court has done since trust in that institution began its rapid decline. “Trust me” will send just the opposite message to stakeholders. It reeks of arrogance in the implied, “you just won’t understand,” and it fails completely to create understanding, which is the key to trust. Relying on “trust me” is a sure way to guarantee that trust won’t occur.

So now the justices will adopt a code of ethics, a form of accountability that can go a long way towards creating the trust they need. But trust only occurs with understanding and appropriate action. It remains to be seen if one or both of those occur. If they do, trust can be restored surprisingly quickly. But the irony of having a rich accountability is that if actions based on stakeholder understanding do not follow it will increase the distrust the accountability was trying to overcome. In other words, its necessary and a brave thing to do accountability well.

Of course, my specialty is school accountability. I'm often asked about the lack of trust in the institution of public schooling and my answer is the same there as it is for what the Supreme Court is experiencing: public educators have been pushed to the side when it comes to accounting for their efforts and instead accountability is something done quite poorly from outside. Trust in that scenario doesn't have a chance.

How to fix that trust? It's the same for the Supreme Court and for public schools: the leaders of our schools can make huge inroads by treating accountability as a discipline of their leadership, accounting for their efforts, creating understandings for their stakeholders, and then acting appropriate to those understandings. No policy change is needed to do accountability well--it was always supposed to be a leadership discipline, not something done from outside. A lousy system and a great system can exist side by side--and in fact, that will quickly prove which is a worthwhile and which is a lousy system by comparison--so waiting for a lousy system to go away is to accept the status quo of distrust as unavoidable. It is not, and our schools and students deserve better.

I say it all the time--fixing accountability is far easier than anyone thinks. We just need to do it. Which is why I love what I do for a living.