As an avid reader of business, leadership and management books, I can say one thing is certain: trends and fads come and go. (Anyone else remember "quality circles"?)For good or ill, my company has decided to adopt "The Oz Principle" as its management methodology. The roll-out has been excruciatingly slow, so I opted to read this book for the "Readers are Leaders" book club and discuss it with the members.The authors put out a different concept of accountability than that to which we have all been exposed. For most of us, accountability means "whose fault is this" -- that's the model that a good many companies use. The authors maintain that accountability means asking yourself "What can I do to make this better" and provide some concrete examples of how their concepts work. They use the characters from L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" to illustrate their four "Steps to Accountability," which is a different approach from similar management ideologies.Overall, there is much to like about these concepts --assuming that *everyone* in the team is on board with modeling the behaviors.
