The Fault Line: Accountability Without Decision Authority

What happens when you're held accountable for a result but can't make the decisions that drive it? Or when you hand someone accountability and forget to give them the authority to act on it? In this episode of The Fault Line, Kim Scribner and Gary Lancina look at both sides of accountability without decision authority. They untangle accountability from responsibility and talk about how leaders set people up to succeed: clear success measures, guardrails like spending limits and check-in cadence, and the autonomy to act within them. Along the way they share stories from their own careers — a leader who believed every decision was important enough for him to make, a workshop where a leader told her team "I trust you" and meant it, and a cake made with powdered sugar that makes a surprisingly good case for delegating by default. They also cover mutual accountability in cross-functional and agile teams, why it's hard when reviews and raises are written for individuals, and what to do if you're on the receiving end: play back what success looks like, find where the boundaries are, and check whether the accountability and authority actually fit.