Studer and "Accountability"

Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, has a post today on the problems of accountability. Levy cites a book by Quint Studer and argues that "it is not only impossible to hold people accountable in an organization, but trying to do so is a misallocation of managerial attention."

Readers of this blog may remember that I wrote two posts (Post #1 and Post #2) disputing the usefulness of another of Quint Studer's central ideas: hire (and keep) the right people (while getting rid of the wrong people, of course).

To be fair, Quint Studer neither owns this idea, nor is he an outlier in endorsing it. In fact, when I was still doing research at HBS, we found that hiring the right people was topmost in the minds of nearly every manager.

Likewise, holding people accountable is another cherished piece of conventional wisdom about leadership. Levy's post not only does a good job of laying it to rest, but provides four good questions that can substitute for all the hand-wringing managers do over accountability.