Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Jan Black.

And I'm Laura Owens.

And it's a pleasure to welcome back top business consultant Greg Bustin to our show.

Greg advises leaders of the world's most admired companies on how to grow and maintain thriving

businesses. And he says accountability is one of the most important factors leading to the success

of a business. Greg has interviewed and surveyed thousands of business leaders to develop a set of

leadership tools that will increase accountability and drive success in any organization. And he's the

author of the book, Accountability, the key to driving a high performance culture. Greg, thank you so

much for joining us again. Well, thank you, Jan and Laura, delighted to be back. How do you define

accountability? Well, my eighth grade English teacher Laura, delighted to be back. How do you define accountability?

Well, my eighth grade English teacher would hate me for saying it because she would always say

you can't use the root of a word when you're defining a word, and yet accountability comes from

ancient Latin, and it was a money lending practice. And so the way that I define accountability is, can I count on you?

The difference between responsibility and accountability, and I actually looked it up to make

sure that I was getting it right.

So responsibility means that you accept an obligation or a job or a task.

Accountability is whether or not you fulfill your

responsibility. And so with great responsibility, of course, comes great accountability.

And you say accountability is one of the biggest challenges business leaders face. Why is that?

I think there's a lot of reasons. I think one reason, probably the

biggest reason, I believe that wherever there is an accountability issue, there is a lack of clarity.

So either you have not been clear on what you want or you're not clear on what you want.

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