Accountability
Always a name. Always the system first.
Every result has an owner. Every failure interrogates the system before it interrogates the person.
Inside the letter A
Accountability in FLAIMS is two rules that always hold together. Every outcome has exactly one name attached to it — owner, result, date. And whenever something fails, the first question is always what in the system allowed this, not who is at fault. Personal ownership and systemic correction are not opposites; they are the only way to get both honesty and results.
The trap
“The team will handle it” means nobody handles it. A culture of personal fault, on the other hand, kills the truth-telling that improvement depends on.
Mechanics
- 01Personalised responsibility: one name, one outcome, one date — every time.
- 02Consequence-duty, system-first: failures default to systemic correction. The person is only the focus once the system has been ruled out.
- 03Failure Overflow: repeated failures escalate up the system rather than only down onto an individual.
- 04Reviewable record: who owned what, when, and what the system learned from it.
Rooted in research
Each source with a short, plain-language summary of what their work actually says.
- Edmondson — Psychological Safety
High-performing teams combine very high standards with the freedom to admit problems early. Accountability and safety are complementary, not in tension.
- Senge — The Fifth Discipline
Most recurring problems have systemic causes. Looking for the individual to punish keeps the same failure pattern alive. Fix the structure and the symptom goes away.
- Reason — Swiss Cheese Model
Serious failures almost never come from a single mistake. They happen when many small holes in different layers of defence line up. The right response is to close holes, not to find a single villain.
In practice
No grey zones. Every outcome is clearly owned, and the system is the first thing we fix when it breaks.
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