Accountability isn't a personality trait

I had two client calls back to back today (not uncommon for me, but these two were noteworthy):

I found myself picking up on the same lesson sitting underneath both of the calls, from opposite ends.

The first owner I've worked with for almost a year.

When we started he was under 10% profit and couldn't see why. We implemented our system (which I know you’re familiar with by now) and helped him bring in a killer head of operations from outside, and he's sitting around 25% now.

Partway through the call today, his ops lead mentioned that the head of accounts isn't working out. And the owner just said it, flatly, the way you'd note the weather: end of the quarter to hit his core initiatives, or they part ways - and he's already got a recruiter looking.

I stopped him there, because I don't think he registered what he’d said.

A year ago he'd have done the total opposite.

He'd have explained the underperformer to me.

He'd have carried the problem for another two quarters because letting it go felt unkind.

Instead he set a standard, put a date on it, and made his peace with either outcome. He's optimising for the business, even though absorbing it himself would have been the more comfortable thing personally.

The second call was a different agency, and the same theme inverted.

A while back they'd brought in someone to be the second-in-command.

As we went through his department it became clear what they were doing. They weren’t optimising for the business. They weren’t really optimising for the team either, though it looks that way from across the room.

The second-in-command was optimising for themselves - by keeping their people comfortable, and by building these tangled, bespoke little processes that only they fully understand.

From the outside it reads like a popular, capable manager.

Underneath, it's a person making themselves impossible to remove.

So I asked them a simple question.

Are you hitting the objectives you're meant to hit? Every time, the reply was a reason they couldn't: this other thing, that other person, the circumstances. The finger never once pointed at themselves.

And that's the distinction, sitting in plain sight across two calls.

We tend to treat accountability as a personality trait - some people have it, some don't - or as a confrontation, the thing you do when you hold someone's feet to the fire. It's neither. It's an orientation.

When reality blocks you, do you reach for "what can I still move from here," or for "here's who's at fault."

You can teach that orientation, but only to people willing to be a little uncomfortable.

The ones who reach for blame instead are optimising one level too low.

The manager optimising for themselves through the team's comfort is the hardest of all to catch, because morale in their corner is good, they’re well liked and it certainly won't show on a dashboard for months.

By the time it does, they’re the only one who knows how half the work gets done.

This is the unglamorous layer underneath everything else - who you've handed authority to, and whether those people are pointed at the business or at themselves.

It's also the layer that decides whether you can ever step back. You don't delegate your way to freedom through people who, the moment you leave the room, optimise for their own comfort.

Which leads me neatly to an announcement:

In June, I'm opening a cohort of our Agency Profit & Scale Accelerator.

It’s for agency owners doing $50K+ per month who have hit a ceiling and can't figure out why:

• You've plateaued for 6+ months, revenue feels stuck

• You are the bottleneck of the business: if you don’t do it, check on it, or save it, it doesn't get done

• You hired ahead of revenue and now your margins are compressed

• You're stuck in delivery, firefighting, making every decision

• You have data (maybe too much), but zero clue what to do with it

• Clients are "reasonably happy" but you're over-serving and undercharging

This is for you IF you're done guessing and you want to be lean, profitable, scalable in 6 months.

I'm keeping it to eight agencies, and I'd rather the people already reading this get first look before it goes anywhere public.

If you'd want the details the moment they're ready, you can put your hand up below.

One click, nothing more than that for now.

Nick