Join the Creative Work Hour crew in Episode 37 as they explore "Accountability." Discover personal stories and insights from Greg, Gretchen, Devin, Alessandra, Bobby B, Nate, and Shadows Pub. Learn about different perspectives on accountability's role in personal and professional contexts, and how it can be reframed to measure progress over perfection. Share your thoughts and experiences for a chance to engage with the community!

Greg
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative Work Hour podcast. Today is January the 18th, 2025. This is episode 37. And in the room today we have myself, Greg, we have Gretchen, we have Devin, we have Alessandra, Bobby B, Nate, Dr. Tamika, Sharon, and Shadows Pub. And we were talking earlier about the word of the year, Alessandra and I. We came up with a really good word and that's accountability. Alessandra, do you want to share a little bit of what we were talking about with accountability?

Alessandra
Yeah, accountability and I are, well, we have a volatile relationship. Accountability is a word that some of my friends absolutely love. They've got their accountability partners and their accountability stickers and I'm like oh my god I can't I don't like accountability I don't like what my body feels like when I use that word and I think it's because I have it misconstrued with the word should And for those of us that grew up and we'll call them special kinds of families, where everybody, where you did not have a chance to just hang the fuck out.

Alessandra
You didn't have a chance to just sit and read your book. You had to be working and doing something all of the time. There was always another thing to be done. You could never rest. And so I attach those feelings and that old trauma residue to the word accountability, and then I get hung up in managing things that I love to do. It spoils a perfectly good party. My daddy would have described that as a turd in the punch bowl. I'm wanting to do these things that matter to me, where I was wired with particular gifts and talents.

Alessandra
And when I do them, exercise them, I feel really freaking good about myself. It's just that getting started and how to manage it seems to be the tricky bit. So Greg, help me. I think I've got a swirl of emotions attached to a word that probably never did anything bad to anybody. It's how I'm looking at it. So how can you help me understand a clearer, more healthy way of looking at the word accountability.

Greg
Right. When we came up with that word, it made me think. And in my mind, at least, and I don't know if it's the official definition, but the meaning of the word accountability. And to me, it rings a record, keeping bookkeeping and accountant, recording, measuring, giving account for, and I think in accountability, you know, we have the ability to account for whatever we want to account for. It made me think of if we were going on a flight there would be a checklist of maybe 100 things and the pilot would have to account for checking those things off and if he'd done 95 out of the 100 and said, okay, we're ready to take off.

Greg
We only had time to do 95% of the checks, but we're probably okay. We'll probably still get there. Is everyone okay with that? Everyone might not be okay with that. And then it made me think that if we want to get somewhere, we have to account or give an accounting or measure in some way how to get there. So it made me have these mixed feelings about accountability, but I was thinking when we say the word accountability, what does that mean to you? What do you feel when you hear accountability? What's your relationship like with accountability?

Greg
Do you have a relationship with it? Do you need it? Do you have it? And you know what, really, What does accountability mean to you? I'll go to Gretchen. When we say accountability, what does it ring to you?

Gretchen
Wow. That brought up a lot of things. That's a good way to look at it, the accounts ability. I mean, as having spent so many years as a teacher, accountability was a big deal, like record keeping, all those kinds of things. We had to keep our lesson plan books for 8 years. We turned them in at the end of each year and they were kept for 8 years. Our grade books, the whole bit, backed up everything. But it was off time, what I found was that that accountability really didn't necessarily represent what a child was really able to be able to do or what I had done.

Gretchen
Instinct has had a lot more to do with it. And what was really out there that you could see between the lines of the check marks, what really counted, what was really needed in there. And if you took away that check mark type of thing, the part that was in between really was sometimes stronger. And so for me, it's not so much the checklist that I have with Pete or what has to be done. It's the people I'm working with or myself, my relationship with the project or with the people that is sometimes more important than the project itself.

Gretchen
It's how I, if someone asks me to keep them on track about something or if I ask them to keep, you know, I'm in a group with that, it's not so much about, like I said, about getting the project done. It's more my response and how they feel about it and how I feel about working with them and that relationship in there that actually means more to me than the done, you know. That's what I think. Greg, I'll let you choose someone next.

Greg
Thank you, Gretchen. I really love that in you, the teacher in you and looking at that and what's really important because it's not always all about checklists, is it? Devon, what do you think of when you come up with accountability? And I know that in your line of work, that's a big thing, right?

Devin
Yeah, I have absolutely 0 positive connotations for the word accountability. Yes, as an accountant, it invokes images of auditors or auditors as we call them. That's never fun. And also personally, I've had that word, I've been in different groups where it, my opinion was just abused, that the concept, the word accountability was used almost as a weird kind of competition and it wasn't for a good end. So that said, the concept I have used successfully, I've had what would be aptly described as accountability be a positive experience. But when that word gets, when that label gets printed out of the label maker and stuck on it, it suddenly goes south for me.

Devin
So yeah, I have to develop a new relationship with that concept.

Greg
Thank you, Devon. I appreciate it. Bobby B., you're next up on my screen. Accountability, what do you think?

Bobby. B
Well, it is a fundamental element of who I am at the basic Webster dictionary level. But it has to be accepted. If I have not accepted, especially if it's implied accountability, then I feel no guilt about maybe something not happening. Sometimes we're just separated by a common language, and we vet that out. But accountability does require good communication. And the other thing is it requires a scenario where you can go back and tell whoever I feel accountable to that the parameters have shifted or whatever. And I will, once I know that there's a higher likelihood of an affecting parameter shifting, I will often let that person or business whatever know So that they're all of a sudden saying, hey, what the hell?

Bobby. B
How come this didn't happen? Okay. But other than that, I just come back to, I have to embrace it within my abilities and then I'll own it. Absolutely.

Greg
Thanks Bobby. Great perspective when you mentioned things may shift and that's okay too, right? You know, the accounting will shift with it. Great point. Nate, when we say accountability, what comes up?

Nate
I mean, I think a lot of what Gretchen and Bobby and Devin have already said, and I think a lot of that sort of resonates for me as well. Accountability to me is really closely related to the idea of expectation. Because usually accountability and expectation sort of goes together. And I have always had a contentious relationship with expectation and responsibility. And so the thing that I think of is, for me, there's a big difference between internal accountability and expectation and external accountability and expectation. And 1 of those things, I mean, I will push back on both of those things, but 1 of those things I will tend to push back a lot more, which is external accountability and expectation because I'll refrain from profanity, but like, yeah, like don't tell me what to do.

Nate
You're not my real dad. And so, I mean, I think that's been a lot of my relationship to accountability in trying to form friend relationships and working relationships that are like, oh, this is what healthy accountability can look like. This is what healthy expectations can look like. This is, you know, how to work against some of my potentially more base rebel, you know, nature. But yeah, expectation, responsibility, accountability, discipline, like all of these words sort of are of a set. And I think, you know, to go back to what Gretchen was saying, like there is an implicit value of a person or a piece of work or whatever that gets lost when you're trying to, like, account when you're trying to be explicit.

Nate
There's an implicit tacit component to that that gets lost. You lose the student in the words in the lesson book. And I think about that a lot. And I try to pull grace from that because, you know, the self derision of not satisfying someone else's expectations does not actually get the whole picture of what is going on.

Greg
Thanks, Nate. Some great points there also. Shadows, you're next up on my screen. Accountability. What do we think?

Shadows Pub
Well, when I was in the bankruptcy and insolvency and mortgages field, I had to do accountability on each file, both for the client and legal standards. And that was OK. Looking after my client. And then I had 15 terms of heading up a local community organization. And after 15 years of that bullshit and being accountable to the members? Yeah, I'm only accountable to me and anybody else that has expectations. We'll do that on a case-by-case basis if they survive.

Greg
Thank you, shadows. Yeah, so listening to those shares, wow, accountability, all kinds of connotations come up. I was thinking, you know, what Gretchen was saying, and Nate was saying, what Devin was saying, Bobby, Shadows, yourself, and trying to formulate what do I, what comes up for Greg and a lot of stirring up thoughts. Almost for me, I think that accountability can almost be weaponized by some people in the guise of giving an accounting or, well, I have to do this.

Greg
It's for your own good because I have to give an account. And I think about school and the teachers and the bullying. So yeah, it has all kinds of connotations for different people. But At the end of the day, I think accountability is just for us, isn't it? Alessandra, did you have any closing thoughts on that?

Alessandra
Well, I love design thinking as a designer. I love design thinking and all the work from Stanford University. And reframing is such a good technique for if you have a word that has an emotional charge to it and you want to shake off the emotional charge. You don't have to take a stone and kill the thing. You can let the word be the word. Go on, thank you, thank you for your service. Let it do its thing. Reframe it as to what will work for you. Something kinder, something gentler. Because we don't need to spend our energy on a fight with a word.

Alessandra
Just saying that makes me feel like, oh my God, but I've done that. What if instead we reframe it to, there's this quote that I heard from 1 of the more famous podcasts that don't need any additional attention from us, but the phrase was, that which we measure, we manage. So it's okay to close the account book and put it on the shelf and just leave that for Ebenezer and Bob Cratchit. But for us, yeah, how do we measure? All we want to do is measure some progress. So that could be like in our spinoff called Practice Not Perfect, it's a place where you can come and you can practice something once a day.

Alessandra
It could be music, it could be editing, it could be You could be working on your new video game and there's a glitchy thing or something that doesn't really give you a buzz and you wanna work that out, but it's a big thing. You don't want it to interrupt with other things. So you simply show up once a day when you can and work on it. So that's a way to measure and manage is to show up at intervals. So there's frequency, there's duration can help, you can take something. There's 1 of the tricks that we have discovered in Practice Not Perfect, which is called the 5 minute technique.

Alessandra
And the 5 minute technique means that you take something that may be easy, or you may feel like it's hard. It may be a small thing or a big thing, but you just mess with it. You poke it with a stick, if you will, for 5 minutes. For me, that's like coming back to classical clarinet. Okay, that was a big, fat, heavy ball of a thing. I couldn't get my head around it, but I get complete credit for every day that I've practiced that thing, if I put my hands on that clarinet, and if I hold it or play it or polish it or take it apart and back together again.

Alessandra
Whatever I do for 5 minutes, that is progress. So the point of what we call accountability is more about are we tracking some progress? Are we seeing progress? Are we freaking giving ourselves credit for staying in the game? So whatever you want to call that, reframe it for yourself and Use the gold stars. We all need dopamine hits. Look we're gonna get them 1 way or another So if we're wanting to work on our thing and we can't make ourselves because there's some resistance there Hack a way to make it easy Hack a way to break off a part.

Alessandra
You don't have to take the whole gumball machine. Stick in a penny. Take out a gumball. Enjoy the hell out of yourself. You just may find yourself enjoying it. Greg? Thanks,

Greg
Alessandra. Well, it's happened again. You've wasted a perfectly few good minutes listening to the Creative Workout podcast. You could have been doing something else. But tell us what is your relationship like with accountability? We would love to hear. In the meantime, come back next week and we'll be here.