Poor performance rarely causes outrage anymore. Talking honestly about it does.
That, at least, is the impression you get from the reaction to Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla and SAP CEO Christian Klein.
Palla described what she found at Deutsche Bahn as a culture of “organized irresponsibility.” Decisions were made in one place, execution somewhere else, and accountability disappeared in between. Klein made an equally unfashionable observation: not everyone is a top performer.
Because neither Palla nor Klein are calling for a return to fear or command-and-control leadership. They argue that accountability starts with leadership—and that people deserve clarity, fairness and honest feedback.
They are not arguing for a return to fear. They are arguing for a return to clarity. Those are not the same thing.
After thirty years working with executive teams, I think this debate exposes a much deeper problem.
We have confused humanizing organizations with making performance impolite to talk about.
Yes, we needed to leave fear cultures behind. Somewhere along the way, organizations also became uncomfortable with differentiation, accountability and consequences. Talking honestly about performance became more controversial than poor performance itself.
Individual underperformance is often the consequence of organizational design.
Decisions without consequences create politics. Responsibility without authority creates cynicism. Accountability without ownership creates self-protection.
Performance doesn’t disappear first. Ownership does. Performance follows.
Parkinson described it decades ago. The real danger of bureaucracy isn’t speed.
It’s that accountability becomes impossible to locate.
Before you conclude this is a Deutsche Bahn or SAP problem, ask yourself something more uncomfortable.
How often are conversations about performance quietly avoided in your organization? How often can no one answer one simple question:
Who owns the outcome?
If your executive team can’t answer that question within seconds, you don’t have an execution problem. You have a leadership problem.
I’ve sat in too many executive team meetings where everyone could explain the problem—but nobody could clearly say who owned the outcome.
This is the conversation I have with almost every executive team I work with. Not because pressure is the answer. And not because pressure is the problem. But because accountability disappears wherever honest conversations about performance are avoided.
Organizations become high-performing when responsibility, authority and consequences belong together.
Differentiation is not inhumane. Dishonesty is.
If speaking honestly about performance has become more controversial than years of poor performance itself, we’re not facing a performance crisis.
We’re facing a culture that has become uncomfortable with holding people accountable.The Accountability Crisis. Why We Avoid Talking About Performance