Zero Accountability


Book Description

Quality research benefits the country when it is sound, reliable, authentically peer-reviewed, paired with transparent access to data, and available to policy makers. Science is not science at all when outcomes are manipulated to reach ends predesigned by government employees carrying the federal mantle. Egregious examples around the nation highlight the devastating impacts to jobs and human safety caused by unaccountable federal bureaucracies that often engage in delay and denial. There is not a level playing field between agents of the federal government and private individuals, small businesses, or even local governments. The federal government's regulations and enforcement tools often enables it to outspend and outwait any possibility that outcomes inconsistent with their agenda will ultimately prevail in a dispute. Recent concerning examples suggest that the Department of the Interior has tolerated and failed to address, what one United States Senator called "abuse of science" within its sub-agencies' actions, and that employees were "emboldened" to "fabricate the science" to justify their purposes. Even more troubling, some employees were apparently rewarded for this behavior. Federal employees should be discouraged, not encouraged from engaging in "advocacy."




Stepping Up


Book Description

A guide to solving problems presents seven principles that enable individuals to be their own agents of change.




Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher Education


Book Description

"1. The book offers teacher educators and stakeholders an overview of accountability in the era of education reform and embraces teacher education accountability as a lever for reconstructing its targets, purposes, and consequences in keeping with the larger democratic project. 2. The book introduces a framework, eight dimensions of accountability, for interrogating dimensions of accountability policy and practice by revealing an accountability initiative's operation but also exposing underlying values and principles, theory of change, and relationship to larger political and policy agendas. 3. Using the authors' framework, eight dimensions of accountability, the book deconstructs four of the most visible education reform initiatives relevant to teacher educators and education stakeholders. The book proposes a rallying call to teacher educators and stakeholders to reclaim accountability using a new approach: democratic accountability in teacher education" --




Extreme Ownership


Book Description

An updated edition of the blockbuster bestselling leadership book that took America and the world by storm, two U.S. Navy SEAL officers who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War demonstrate how to apply powerful leadership principles from the battlefield to business and life. Sent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership—at every level—is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations. From promising startups to Fortune 500 companies, Babin and Willink have helped scores of clients across a broad range of industries build their own high-performance teams and dominate their battlefields. Now, detailing the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment. A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership revolutionizes business management and challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win.







Achieve with Accountability


Book Description

ACCOUNTABILITY IS THE CATALYST THAT IGNITES: Accelerated Change, Robust Employee Engagement, Intensified Ownership, Relentless Perseverance, Impeccable Alignment, and propels individuals, teams and organizations to desired results. Accountability crumbles silos, boosts teamwork and collaboration, strengthens camaraderie, creativity, resiliency, agility, trust, and communication Achieve with Accountability presents a recipe for awakening the whatever it takes attitude to achieve what matters most to individuals, teams and organizations. Discover how to transform accountability into a positive, engaging and forward looking experience that will secure your position in the new world of work. Learn how to kick-start a revolution that will blast your team or organization to new heights of success. We are in a brawl with no rules, where the fast, flexible and agile will eat and spit out the slow, over-thinking and complacent. When you relinquish accountability you place your future in the hands of other people or events. It's only by taking accountability and ownership for our circumstances that we can achieve what matters most. Embrace the accountability fundamentals that have helped individuals, teams and organizations for years to achieve and exceed what matters most. With the world coming at us fast and furious every day, it's easy to feel like you've lost control of your own life, your team or your organization. By choosing to take and lead accountability you reclaim control and are able to direct your own destiny. Develop the agility, flexibility and resiliency to adapt and thrive during constant change Foster a can-do, resolute, solutions focus in the face of difficult challenges, obstacles and barriers Eradicate the blame-game and vanquish excuse-making that stifles peak performance Shed feelings of disarray, discomfort, apathy, entitlement, indifference and despair Take control over your circumstances and achieve what matters most Unleash voluntary contributions of discretionary performance that is often left untapped in individuals, teams and organizations Establish unshakable trust and credibility Accountability is a current that feeds into the slipstream of success. Your performance, your decisions, and your results are all your responsibility; when you operate from that premise, magic happens. Achieve with Accountability shows you how to nourish that can-do mindset, so you can begin to achieve what matters most.




Academic Accountability


Book Description




Accountable Governance


Book Description

Public accountability is a hallmark of modern democratic governance and the foundation of the popular performance management movement. Democracy is just an empty exercise if those in power cannot be held accountable in public for their acts and omissions, for their decisions, their policies, and their expenditures. This book offers a finely detailed and richly informed consideration of accountability in both government and the contemporary world of governance. Twenty-five leading experts cover varying aspects of the accountability movement, including multiple and competing accountabilities, measuring accountability, accountability and democratic legitimacy, and accountability and information technology, and apply them to governments, quasi-governments, non-government organizations, governance organizations, and voluntary organizations. Together they provide the most comprehensive consideration of accountability currently available, with a blend of theoretical, empirical, and applied approaches.




How Did That Happen?


Book Description

The New York Times bestseller that provides a simple, proven approach to improve accountability and the bottom line. The economy crashes, the government misfires, businesses fail, leaders don't lead, managers don't manage, and people don't follow through, leaving us asking, "How did that happen?" Surprises caused by a lack of personal accountability plague almost every organization today, from the political arena to large and small businesses. How Did That Happen? offers a proven way to eliminate these nasty surprises, gain an unbeatable competitive edge, and enhance performance by holding others accountable the positive, principled way. As the experts on workplace accountability and the authors of The Oz Principle, Roger Connors and Tom Smith tackle the next crucial step everyone can take, whether working as a manager, supervisor, CEO, or individual performer: creating greater accountability in all the people on whom you depend.




Rethinking Democratic Accountability


Book Description

Traditionally, American government has created detailed, formal procedures to ensure that its agencies and employees are accountable for finances and fairness. Now in the interest of improved performance, we are asking our front-line workers to be more responsive, we are urging our middle managers to be innovative, and we are exhorting our public executives to be entrepreneurial. Yet what is the theory of democratic accountability that empowers public employees to exercise such discretion while still ensuring that we remain a government of laws? How can government be responsive to the needs of individual citizens and still remain accountable to the entire polity? In Rethinking Democratic Accountability, Robert D. Behn examines the ambiguities, contradictions, and inadequacies in our current systems of accountability for finances, fairness, and performance. Weaving wry observations with political theory, Behn suggests a new model of accountability—with "compacts of collective, mutual responsibility"—to address new paradigms for public management.