Unempowered Accountability: The Silent Killer of Tech Startups

There are countless articles and books written about accountability in the workplace - its importance and measurement, the consequences of its absence, and how it can propel or backfire. The most popular of them center around how folks in many organizations have an overwhelming sense that no one’s taking responsibility for outcomes. This environment often leads to finger-pointing, frustration, and a sense of powerlessness - all of which negatively impact an organization’s culture and outcomes. Addressing this issue is crucial and it’s definitely a topic I hope to discuss in the future. 

But for now, I want to focus on a different aspect of accountability, one that is often overlooked or ignored in tech startups: accountability without authority, or what I like to call “unempowered accountability.” This phenomenon of holding people responsible for outcomes without giving them the power to make decisions is an extremely common and major issue in tech startups.

I’d imagine that most of us have encountered this type of work situation at some point in our lives. We’re responsible for # of leads generated, but we don’t have the autonomy to choose which campaigns we launch and when. We’re held accountable for delivering a project on time, but we have no authority to identify milestones or set ETA’s with other contributors. We’re responsible for putting together a strategic plan but someone else swoops in at the eleventh hour and demands we change core elements that change the strategy.

In each of these examples, the lack of autonomy and empowerment can lead to unrealistic expectations around delivery and performance, an inability for folks to truly apply their expertise and creativity, a feeling of being set up for failure, and overall frustration and demoralization since efforts and expertise are clearly not being valued or respected.

The challenge with unempowered accountability is that it insidiously hides in plain sight, acting like a deadly venom that weakens organizations from the inside-out, suffocating creativity, motivation, morale, trust, and slowly killing companies until it’s too late to turn things around.

How to Spot Unempowered Accountability

To spot it, we have to go below the surface. We must navigate beyond the dazzling lights of PR and buzz, venture past the champagne-popping celebrations of multi-million-dollar fundraising rounds, way past the pleasantries of water cooler small talk, burrow underneath the glitzy veneer of flashy KPI reports, and behind the curtain of “here’s-what-our-team-did” presentations at all-hands meetings.

We’ll find unempowered accountability lurking in the shadows, taking the form of micromanagement at every level of the organization. We’ll see it when it rears its ugly head as blame and finger-pointing, poisoning conversations with gossip and sowing the seeds of mistrust. It whispers in the ears of team members, encouraging them to undermine one another and sacrifice collaboration and confrontation for self-preservation.

You'll see it in the persistent micromanagement at all levels, chronic complaining, along with lots of swirling - or endless discussions without clear directions. It also manifests as passive-aggressive behavior, inefficiency, and procrastination. In these environments, there's an excessive focus on process and bureaucracy, while ambiguity surrounds goals, objectives, roles, and responsibilities. 

You'll also notice an abundance of "busy work" - so much to do, not enough time - without anyone really understanding the impact of it all, tons of armchair quarterbacking (critiquing others and giving feedback without being asked or taking action), and an overemphasis on personal image and how one comes across rather than a focus on substance.

All of this leads to high stress levels, low morale, and diminished productivity and engagement across the board.

The Impact of Unempowered Accountability on Business Outcomes

Once we’ve peeled back the layers and spotted unempowered accountability in its various forms, it’s crucial to understand the detrimental impact it can have on organizations and their business outcomes.

Unempowered accountability isn’t just a nuisance. Allowing it to exist gives rise to a toxic context or culture. And it’s not something that we should continue to throw over the fence to HR to figure out and solve in isolation; it is a silent killer that chokes the life out of companies, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

Addressing this problem requires the collective effort and commitment of the entire leadership team, particularly the founders and C-suite, to create and maintain a culture where both the employees and the company can sustainable grow, thrive, and achieve success.

It can totally wreak havoc on organizations in many ways, extending beyond morale and people dynamics to impact business outcomes. It contributes to:

Hindered product development - creativity and innovation are stifled as autonomy and decision making power are taken away from the experts hired to do the job and grabbed by those in power. This can lead to a slow, inefficient, and ineffective product development process, roadmaps that remain largely unfulfilled, and scope creep ultimately resulting in subpar products that don’t resonate with customers

Decline in customer acquisition and growth - similarly, when employees are not given the autonomy to choose, create, execute, and decide, they won’t be able to implement their talents, take risks, think outside the box, grow in their expertise, or even have the desire to test ideas or try anything new. This can directly impact customer growth.

Decreased customer retention - reduced innovation along with low quality products and services will lead to organizations failing to evolve and meet the needs of their customers which leads to customer dissatisfaction, reduced customer retention rates.

Decreased ROI - all of these inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and inability to capitalize on any market trends will have a direct impact on ROI. What’s going in is much more than what’s coming out. Stunted revenue growth - Stalled customer growth, increased customer churn, and lack of innovative products or product features ultimately result in a decline in revenue as customers turn to competitors for better solutions.

Reduced EBITDA and cash runway - all of these inefficiencies, poor decision-making, reduced productivity, and high employee turnover directly impact a company’s EBITDA and cash runway, ultimately leading to financial instability or even collapse.

Why Does Unempowered Accountability Exist?

Holding people responsible for outcomes without granting them the autonomy to figure things out or the authority to make decisions clearly manifests itself in various damaging ways and is a prime example of boiling the frog. Gradual erosion of decision-making power, coupled with the expectation of delivering results often goes unnoticed, unacknowledged, and unaddressed until it’s too late to reverse the damage.

So why does this happen? Why do so many tech startups and scale-ups have a culture of unempowered accountability? There are a number of reasons:

Faced-paced, high-pressure environments

There’s usually a high degree of uncertainty and ambiguity in startups. Whether companies are still trying to find product-market fit, understand customer needs and market trends, nail their messaging, or scale their teams, build revenue engines, and drive bottom line growth - there’s an inherently low level of predictability and high level of nuanced complications in these complex environments.

Elements are rapidly changing. There is no copy/paste, no clear cause and effect, no proven model to guide next steps. In these complex contexts, we have to probe, deduce, experiment, learn, adapt and repeat in order to grow and succeed. Success in these environments is rooted in having the agility and flexibility to explore and experiment - where we constantly gather information, make sense of what’s happening, and take informed actions based on what we learn. 

So we wear many hats, jumping from role to role, not having the time to clarify who’s doing what, what success looks like, how it’s measured, or how to communicate it accordingly. Teams scale quickly, needs change, protocols are created ad-hoc and on the fly. There’s a lot of pivoting; a lot of “building the plane in flight”. And if we don’t slow down for just a minute to see what’s happening and build frameworks (or what Atul Gawane calls “checklists”) to support this complex environment and the people in it, then we’re only setting ourselves up to fail.

Inexperience

Lots of folks don’t want to hear this and fear acknowledging it, but many startup founders and managers, although brilliant and hard-working, may also be first-time leaders, lacking the experience and knowledge needed to effectively empower their teams. They most likely haven’t received any formal management training or leadership coaching, which can lead to them having a limited understanding of how to navigate complex environments and foster a culture of accountability in which employees are empowered to take ownership of their work and decisions. I mean, how many of us have received that kind of training or guidance? The norm seems to be that we hire smart, skilled, talented people and assume they know how to lead, communicate, and collaborate effectively. We forget that leadership is also a skill that needs to be learned and honed.

Add to that the external pressures of meeting investor expectations, dealing with tight deadlines, and facing short cash runways, leaders are almost forced into focusing on short-term results at the expense of empowering their team members, which scares them into taking decision-making power away from their people. This is hard stuff to navigate.

Many times we’re all learning on the fly. And if we lack guidance, self-awareness, and feedback, then we stay stuck in our stories, showing up the way we always have, protecting our sense of self at the cost of being uncomfortable with uncertainty and growing from there.

Unclear roles and responsibilities

The rapid growth, constantly changing needs, and increased complexity experienced at startups and scale-ups naturally lead to roles and responsibilities not being clearly defined, which can create confusion around who has the authority to make decisions and who is ultimately accountable for outcomes too.

Example 1: In a startup with 20 employees, one person may wear many hats and be accustomed to making decisions to drive results. But as the company grows to 50 or 100 employees and new hires take on some of those responsibilities, the original employee may still believe they’re the decision maker in certain areas. This can lead to conflicts and inefficiencies since multiple people may attempt to make decisions in the same domain without clear lines of authority.

Example 2: A scale-up’s team is growing quickly to help drive high-level KPIs, with new positions being added almost monthly. New team members join, eager to fulfill their roles, while legacy team members haven’t had their roles updated to account for the changes. This can result in confusion and a lack of clarity around who’s responsible for what, leading to duplicated efforts, missed opportunities, and a breakdown in communication.

Example 3: In another common scenario, a startup undergoes a strategic pivot (totally normal and expected), causing a shift in priorities and objectives. This change can leave employees unsure about their roles and responsibilities within the company's new direction, leading to a myriad of assumptions regarding who’s accountable for what, as the roles from the previous strategy no longer align with the current one.

Example 4: Another common occurrence, and a particularly dangerous one in my opinion, arises when multiple teams or departments collaborate on a project or share outcomes. Undefined roles and responsibilities at the group level can create confusion surrounding ownership, decision-making authority, and accountability. This ambiguity can give rise to unnecessary friction, territorial disputes, “us vs them” mentalities, and communication breakdowns. It can also lead to delays, conflicts, and overall stagnation, as folks may attempt to impose their decisions when, in reality, the responsibility for the outcomes should be shared equally among the involved parties.

The long short of it is that it happens because of two things: our inability to recognize the nature of startup/scale-up’s complex environments and our lack of awareness around how we show up as leaders and consequently handle and manage in these complex environments.

The Alternative: Empowered Accountability and Its Benefits

Now that we’ve seen how detrimental it is to hold people responsible for outcomes without giving them the autonomy and authority to figure things out and make decisions, and understand why it may exist in tech startups and scale-ups, it’s time to explore the alternative: empowered accountability. By empowering your team members and the folks in your organizations with the authority, autonomy, and resources they need to achieve their goals, (and what you hired them to do) you can create a more healthy, motivated, productive work environment that drives better business outcomes.

While the benefits of empowered accountability may seem obvious after discussing the danger of a world with the opposite, it’s worth calling them out so that we may see them clearly:

• Increased creativity and innovation
• Improved morale and job satisfaction
• Higher employee engagement and productivity
• Better decision making
• Greater adaptability and agility
• Enhanced collaboration and teamwork
• Attracting and retaining top talent

And all of these benefits will lead to tangible business results like:

• Improved product development
• Increased customer acquisition and growth
• Higher customer retention
• Boosted ROI
• Accelerated revenue growth
• Improved EBITDA and cash runway
• Stronger company culture
• Increased employee satisfaction and retention

How to Create a Culture of Empowered Accountability as a Leader

So what now? You’re a leader at a tech startup or scale-up and recognize some of the signs of unempowered accountability showing up on your team or in your org. How do you address it? How do you change the current, toxic, unproductive environment to a healthy, productive one? Though there is no straight answer or list, or a magic want you could just wave to make it all happen, there are some things you can address to start making changes.

Get a lay of the land - What are you noticing? What’s going on around you? What are the patterns? Is no one really speaking up in your meetings? Do you sense passive aggressiveness in emails? Have ETAs become moving targets? Do you overhear lots of complaining? Is there a lot of talk and little action? What about behaviors between your team and others? Don’t make it right or wrong. Jot down what you observe.

Take a hard look at yourself - imagine you’re an observer watching a movie that is you as a leader. How do you conduct meetings? How do you approach situations? What are you saying to team members? What do you feel when things aren’t going well? How do you respond? This is your opportunity to reflect on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and see if and how any of them are contributing to the current situation. Don’t make it right or wrong. Jot down what you observe.

Get feedback from others - we all have blind spots. Find out yours. How are you showing up in ways that you’re not aware of? Look for the patterns in the feedback. Don’t make it wrong or right. Just listen.

Visualize how you see yourself and your team operating, the results they’d produce, and what it would take. What frameworks, guidelines, checklists, or protocols can you provide that will empower your team? How will you clarify the destination so that they can figure out how they want to get there?

Figure out what needs to change - What needs to change in how you show up, in the clarity you can provide and in the resources you can give? Here are some things that you can do:

  Establish clear goals and objectives: Make sure that everyone understands the company’s goals and objectives, how they map to your department or team, the corresponding team goals and objectives, and how their individual contributions align with those goals. This can also help ensure that folks on your team are working towards a common purpose and feel a sense of ownership over their work.

  Clearly define roles and responsibilities: Ensure that each team member has a clear understanding of their role, responsibilities, what they’ll be held accountable for, and decision-making authority. Also let them know what it looks like to be successful in their role. This can help eliminate confusion, reduce duplication of effort, and improve overall efficiency.

  Provide the necessary resources and support: Equip your team members with the tools, resources, and support they need to achieve their goals. Many times this will include frameworks, protocols, guidelines, or checklists. This may also include training, mentorship, access to information, or technology.

  Encourage open communication and feedback: Unfortunately, plenty of tech companies treat feedback like it’s a once or twice a year occurrence that gets dispelled via performance reviews. This is largely unproductive and contributes to an environment of fear. It’s important that feedback is something that is not saved for special instances, nor for certain people, but rather something that’s provided regularly, by anyone to anyone. It’s important to foster a culture where employees feel comfortable communicating, expressing their opinions, sharing ideas, and providing feedback. Create an atmosphere where people feel safe and trust one another. This can help identify potential issues, promote continuous improvement, and drive better decision-making. And most of us aren’t taught how to do that, so it’s important to model how it’s done.

  Delegate authority and decision-making power: This is critical. I know it can be scary for a department head to let go of specifics because it’s essentially their butt on the line at the end of the day. But just as we’ve seen, meddling in the details and taking decision making power away from your team is only going to backfire and not take you where you need to be. So trust your employees to make decisions and give them the autonomy to do so. This not only empowers them but also frees up your time as a leader to focus on more strategic initiatives. And if the results aren’t where they need to be, swoop in, discuss, have conversations, provide guidance, reassess, iterate.

  Recognize and reward success: At the end of the day, it’s not really about you. It’s about your team; your organization. And as a leader, you need to celebrate the achievements of your team members and reward their contributions. This can help reinforce the importance of accountability and motivate employees to continue performing at their best.

  Continuously evaluate and adjust: Remember, tech startups and scale-ups are complex domains, where there’s rapid change, tons of unpredictability, and not much clarity around cause and effect. Regularly assess your team and organization's progress towards fostering empowered accountability, and make adjustments as needed to ensure ongoing improvement.

All of this may seem daunting and overwhelming, and that’s ok. It’s a lot to manage! Knowing that you're not alone helps - so try to work alongside mentors or hire a leadership coach who can partner with to help you navigate and grow.

How to Navigate Unempowered Accountability as an Employee

This is a tough one. Sometimes you feel trapped, suffocated, and demoralized. I mean, what’s the point, right? But you’re not a non-player-character in a video game. You are an active participant in life, and you have powers. You choose your thoughts, feelings, and actions. So what do you do? Again, there is no one answer, but here’s an approach that may help you:

Get a lay of the land - The first few parts of the approach here are similar to that given to leaders because change begins with awareness. And even as an individual contributor it’s important to get a clearer sense of what’s really going on. What’s happening? What exactly is going on? What behaviors are you observing? What patterns are you seeing? What results are you experiencing? Try to separate what’s happening from your interpretation of it. Don’t make any of it right or wrong. Jot down what you observe.

Take a hard look at yourself - I know this can be difficult, especially when you feel like you’re the victim and “they’re” the villain. And there’s insight in that. What is it that’s making you feel like a victim? What are you thinking that’s making “them” out to be villains? How are you showing up? What are you doing that may be contributing to the team culture? Are you gossiping about others? Slacking colleagues during meetings? Complaining? Working 10 hours a day? Constantly taking on requests that come in at the expense of your personal time? Don’t make any of it right or wrong. Jot down what you observe.

Get feedback from others - Again, blind spots. We all have them. What are other people noticing about you that you may not be aware of. This may be hard to hear, but it’s important nonetheless. Your power is in seeing the patterns. Yes, we’re all interpreting and making sense of the world through our own lenses and that’s why it’s important to sometimes take feedback with a grain of salt. But when there’s a recurring piece of feedback about your behavior, pay attention to it. It may reveal something you didn’t know, you didn’t know about yourself. Don’t make any of it right or wrong. Just listen.

Envision what your ideal role would look like - How do you see yourself operating? How would your boss be operating? Your team? What resources do you have? How would you be spending your day? How would you be showing up in conversations? What is the outcome you want out of your employment with this company?

Figure out what you need to do in order to get what you want - Is your goal to grow in your career? Have challenging yet enjoyable workdays? Personal development? What is it? Once you identify what it is you want, and the vision you have for it, you can begin to figure out what you may need to do. Here are some possibilities:

  Seek clarity on roles and responsibilities - make sure you proactively ensure you have a clear understanding of what your role is, what your responsibilities are, how it fits with the larger team, what you are being held accountable for, and what success looks like in that role. Sometimes you may not have a job description that lays it all out, and that’s ok - it happens. Don’t wait for it to happen or complain that it’s non-existent. Write what you think it is, and share it with your manager for feedback and alignment.

  Seek support from mentors or peers - Reach out to colleagues, mentors, or professional networks for guidance and support. They can offer valuable insights and perspectives on how to navigate challenging work environments and help you identify ways to positively influence the culture.

  Communicate openly and proactively with caution - Start with small, non-threatening topics and begin by sharing your thoughts or ideas on less sensitive, non-emotionally-charged matters to gauge your manager’s receptiveness and gradually build trust. It doesn’t matter how “right” you are, if the context is one of fear or mistrust - for you or for your manager - then whatever you say will be filtered through that light. So trust is important. If something’s not working, let them know what’s not working, why, the impact it has on them, on the business, and on you. It’s important not to turn this into a venting, unloading, or finger pointing session. Get yourself to “emotion neutral” before having a conversation.

  Separate content from context to regain your power: A lot of times, when we wake up, log in, and walk into environments where we feel we’re not valued, trusted, or even challenged to use our talents and creativity, it’s easy to be demoralized and fall victim to complacency, seeking out like-minded, ticked off folks to complain with and swap stories. It can be affirming and validating, but the feeling is fleeting and does little to improve or change our situation. When we keep talking and focusing on the things we don’t like, those things seem to get bigger and bigger and have stronger holds on us. So take a moment to separate out what’s really happening from your story about what’s happening (content vs context).

What is actually happening (content) is an objective, observable, non-descriptive, bland statement while your story, or what you’re making it mean (context) is laden with descriptors, emotions, labels, hypotheticals, and all the words that give it life. Once you isolate what really happened (i.e. My boss told me to change the strategy of my project) then you’ll be in a better position to clearly see what’s going on and decide what it is you want to do, rather than just stay stuck feeling all the feels in your story (i.e. That idiot did it again! Not respecting me, swooping in at the last minute to tell me to change what I’ve been working on all week. He’s so stupid. This is ridiculous. I don’t know why I have to put up with this nonsense…)

You can’t control the outcome, but you can control how you show up to influence the outcome. And therein lies your power.

  Reassess your fit with the company: Sometimes you give it all you got but if the culture is taking a huge toll on your well-being or career growth, it may be time to reassess whether the company is a right fit for you. Consider your values, goals, and long-term aspirations, and weigh them against your current work environment. If the team or company culture does not align with your values or support your growth, it might be time to explore other opportunities. And I know this may be tough, especially in our current tech environment, but you still have a choice.

Ultimately, there is no one answer or one way of doing things that can solve for or eradicate unempowered accountability. People are people. We all come with our stories, experiences, ways of being, and how we view and interact with the world. The very complex nature of tech startups and scale-ups throws us all into a highly ambiguous web full of uncertainty and lack of clarity.

And none of us really learn how to navigate such environments when we’re younger. So the best we can do is expand our awareness, learn from successful approaches, experiment, be patient with ourselves and others, and make choices that bring us closer to where we want to be.

As Daniel Markovitz says in his HBR article on productivity, “The rule is simple: If the employee is responsible for the outcome, then they should have the authority to make the necessary decisions without being forced into an endless string of emails, meetings, or presentations.” The closer we can get to creating that kind of empowered accountability, the better organizational and business results we’ll be able to see and experience.