Accountability Lesson from Football

An excellent article in the Wall Street Journal compared and contrasted the West Point “honor code” with the University of Miami. This story illustrated accountability versus compliance with the NCAA standards. Although both organizations would claim that ethics are important which one really lived out their claim? The point made in the WSJ was that community (mutual accountability) impacts the way individuals live out ethics or “the code.”
When an organization wants to change it is not enough to explain the change. Both leaders and peers can be setup for success by holding each other mutually accountable. Mutual accountability is getting clear on the results, owning the actions to accomplish the results and taking responsibility for the outcomes. 
Just as ethics is an ongoing process, change is a process that takes time, diligence and reinforcement. Mutual accountability is a method for reinforcement that all change projects should leverage.