I think that&#x27;s 90% of what I&#x27;m saying.<p>More subtly, I&#x27;m saying that focusing more on accountability than on the conditions that enable fulfilling responsibilities creates negative feedback loops from the inherently negative reinforcement of accountability.<p>As the others have noted, accountability only exists as a means to control through fear. It only comes up in the event of failure, and is a means of personal individual punishment.<p>For that reason, it is not conductive to improvement, nor does it effectively motivate people to actually do work better over the long term. Invariably the limiting factor that caused them to fail in the first place is not a simple lack of care or willpower: the only factors that accountability is truly suited to control. Instead, failure is most often due to a complex web of factors both internal and external to the individual—and the only way to improve is to focus on that system. Accountability instead focuses all efforts inward and tends toward ignorance of the system, which is ignorance of the truth, which is a path to more failure.<p>In short, accountability is an unproductive concept born out of distrustful false beliefs about people. Discard it from your repertoire.