Doris used to run a funeral services company, which is not where I expected to find such a useful lesson about accountability. She had a simple expectation in her business: if you saw something unacceptable, you raised it privately with the person concerned within 24 hours. You did not save it for the next team meeting, discuss it with three other people first, or wait until it had grown into something much bigger.
In many workplaces, the opposite happens. Someone notices a problem and intends to raise it, but decides the timing is not quite right. A few days pass, then a few weeks, and what could have been a brief and relatively straightforward conversation begins to carry much more weight. By the time it is finally addressed, people have formed views about what happened, what was intended and why nobody acted sooner.
Sometimes the matter is quietly dropped. In other cases, it becomes formal, with HR involved, meetings arranged and everyone choosing their words very carefully. All of that can happen because the small, uncomfortable conversation that should have taken place three weeks earlier never occurred.
I do not think the delay is usually deliberate. Most leaders probably tell themselves they will deal with the issue soon, but “soon” is not a clear expectation and uncomfortable conversations have a habit of slipping down the priority list. In the meantime, the person involved does not know whether anyone noticed, while everyone else begins drawing conclusions about what is actually tolerated.
This is how Unwritten Ground Rules (UGRs) form. People learn far more from what leaders do, ignore or delay than they do from a policy or statement of values. If unacceptable behaviour occurs and nothing is said, the emerging UGR may be, “Around here, poor behaviour is tolerated,” or, “Around here, leaders avoid difficult conversations.”
The 24-hour timeframe may have been arbitrary, but its strength was that it was specific. People knew what was expected, and leaders could be held accountable for acting promptly rather than eventually. It is worth asking what the real gap is in your workplace between someone seeing something unacceptable and someone naming it—not the timeframe in the policy, but what actually happens around here.
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