Lessons from a Lack of Accountability
By: Thomas B. Cox
Tags: Accountability

A story of dropping the ball, and how not to.

(This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book The Accountability Protocol.)

Not long ago a friend of mine was driving. He had a minor traffic accident, and shared with the other driver (in the modern way) an image on his phone showing his insurance coverage. My friend also called his own insurance agent, and gave the details of the collision.

My friend might be forgiven for thinking he’d done what needed doing.

A month later, a letter arrives from the state DMV saying my friend’s driving privileges were suspended for 90 days for driving without insurance.

What?

In the process of untangling this, it turns out that many balls were dropped by many people. We’ll review a few, and learn some lessons for how we might live our own lives better and safer.

Reasonably enough, my driver friend assumed his call to his insurance agent was all he needed to do. Turns out the agent he called, didn’t have the correct policy number on file. Why? My friend recently married, and switched to his wife’s agent, but then called the OLD agent when he had his collision. (Meanwhile the NEW agent had the correct policy number… but the wrong address for my friend.) These two agents did not talk to one another. Neither of them proactively contacted my friend to say there were problems. Neither agent “officially” notified the insurance company (why is this even a separate step?) of the collision, so the other driver’s insurance company rationally assumed my friend was uninsured, and tattled to the state, who suspended his license.

My friend assumed the best and didn’t double check or follow up. Nobody did. My friend is now paying the price of having to scramble to clean things up.

Lesson One: learn the rules and moves of the game. Who is supposed to do what? Who needs to receive what information? What trouble can I get into if anyone else drops a ball? Most service providers are relative experts in their discipline and will happily answer your questions. This might sound like:

“Hey, you deal with this all the time. How does this normally play out? What should I look out for? How do you see people getting into trouble with this process? If I were your favorite niece or nephew, what advice would you give me?”

Your polite and sincere curiosity will almost always be rewarded with insider knowledge.

Lesson Two: follow up. Silence is NOT a sign that all is well. Silence only means you have no idea what’s happening. Get something in writing from the players stating that they have handled the situation. Get commitments from players that they will notify you proactively when they finish their parts. This might sound like:

“Hey, when are you likely to be done with your work on this? Could I trouble you to send me an email letting me know the status? When should I mark my calendar so I know when to start worrying if I haven’t heard anything?”

Lesson Three: track your open loops. Most of us have dozens or hundreds of these little dramas playing out in our lives all the time — far more than we can track in our heads. Did Amazon get that pair of jeans I returned? Has my tax refund shown up? When is that lawyer supposed to get back to me about the will?

Create (or re-commit) to a system of self organization. I’m a fan of Kanban boards and I use Trello or KanBanFlow; anything can work as long as you develop habits and routines to support the discipline of tracking open loops and ensuring they are closed correctly. (I meet weekly with my assistant to walk through all the cards in our shared KanBanFlow board, and I update cards on the board daily. Mostly.)

Life isn’t getting any less complex. You can take steps to simplify your life. And, you can take steps to wrestle the unavoidable complexities into control. It’s doable; it’ll save you time, money, and bother; it’ll build your reputation as a reliable person; and you’ll sleep easier at night.

(This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book The Accountability Protocol.)

Learn More

To learn more about the forthcoming book The Accountability Protocol and how to be notified when it’s available, visit this link.

Excerpts on Medium from the Book The Accountability Protocol: