Why Businesses Perform and Everyone Else Doesn’t

It is remarkable how large the accountability gap has grown between what is considered normal and expected in the world of business and private enterprise…

…and the profound lack of accountability that sadly we have become so accustomed to and from the other major Institutions of our society - Government, Education, Healthcare, Religion, Etc.

It goes like this: Businesses must deliver daily on their product and service promises or a) Customers just stop buying and b) significant reputational damage is effected in this “Online Star Rating” world of ours.

For everybody else? Not so much.

Imagine, with its 9% approval rating, what Congress’ ’“Yelp” / “Trip Advisor” star rating would be?

Or, for that matter, what it would be for our local high school, community college, or hospital?

And, at the risk of controversy, I think most religious leaders would seriously shirk from having their institutions’ reputational scores widely shared with the general public.

Now, one could say that - because the intents of most businesses are so different from these other institutions - that this is an unfair comparison.

Or that we can’t define “accountability” for these other institutions because of the legitimate “values” disagreements within them - i.e. for education is the accountability around teaching say - hard work or creativity? 

For government is it about liberty or equality?  For healthcare longevity or wellness? 

To this I say poppycock!
 
Like for $50,000 per year for average private school tuition, how much hard work and / or creativity are universities really teaching our young?

Or for the 35% of the wealth of our society that local, state, and federal governments appropriate, how much freedom and how much equality are we really getting? Or more prosaically, for what we are paying for it how high is the quality of our airports, roads, schools, and parks?

Or how much wellness are we getting for that $2,600 MRI?

Or that $30,000(!) average hospital stay cost?

The answer, of course, is that if even the most mediocre of businesses were given access to the resources that these other institutions have that the value and customer ROI delivered per dollar spent would increase dramatically.

So how can the ambitious entrepreneur and executive leverage this accountability gap to their advantage and gain?

Well, for starters, step out more and shout from the rooftops how proud you are to be In Business– both in general and specifically as to the value your business delivers.

It is good for our personal psyches, and is inspirational for all when some of the spotlight and attention is taken away by "the other guys."

And then, reflect long hard on the connection between the experiences of your customer, the accountability mindset within your organization, and your business's online reputational scores.

Improving any of them is almost always dependent on improving all of them.

Through this Kaizen - this commitment to constant improvement - will not just further widen the accountability gap between business and all of the other institutions of our society…

…but that between our tightly measured and always improving enterprises and our more “fuzzily run” competition.

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