i think a lot of people would agree that the incessant string of e-mails these days is to produce a proper paper trail for accountability… since the e-mails PUSH their way into someone’s attention field in the in-box, the sender therefore thinks he/she is PUSHING the attached accountability of that project’s next stage into someone’s court. (i.e. “well, i sent you an e-mail that said the project would cost twice as much. you must have seen it.”)

problem is, what they are really doing is assigning responsibility to the next stage of a project to someone else, with no clear way to follow-up to cover their own accountability for it. there’s an old saying i am fond of… “The difference between accountability and responsibility is that you can delegate responsibility.” Therefore, those who are ACCOUNTABLE for a project’s outcome (or a stage’s particular outcome) can e-mail all they want to attempt to assign RESPONSIBILITY, but unless the sender gets a firm commitment, positive or negative, from the recipient, the onus still lies with the SENDER to Get Things Done.

This has been your life lesson for today. Please collect your two cents at the register. ;-)