Adam Markel uses lifeguard and everyday workplace/corporate anecdotes to illustrate accountability, shared responsibility, and empowered leadership—arguing that when teams adopt a ‘nobody goes down on our watch’ mindset and leaders empower people at every position, organizational performance and attention to detail improve.
Chapters
You know, the thing about accountability at the beach was sometimes you were on that stand all day long, the sun got to you, you got distracted, or the sun was in your eyes, even, and all of a sudden there'd be another lifeguard that came out of nowhere and ran a rescue right in your water. And. Yeah. Was it embarrassing? Yes. Did it ding our ego a little bit when it happened? Sometimes somebody else was a little bit more paranoid than you were, and then you have a conversation with them sort of at the lifeguard shack later on. Go. You know, I got him. He was there. I saw what was going on, and that other person was like, that's okay. Remember our mantra? Nobody goes down on our watch. Which meant you put your ego aside and we simply held each other to a higher standard of accountability. But what's it like in the corporate space? Sometimes it's like this cartoon, right? We're pointing at other people. Who's responsible? Who's responsible for making changes around here? I'm a baseball fan, and I love this picture. This is one of the three games I think that the Padres won this particular year. And. And I love it because you can see the balls, like, right there in the middle. And these guys are going, who's responsible? Whose job is it to catch that ball? Wasn't my job. Whose job is it to pick up that paper in the hallway? I used to walk down the hallway in our office, and sometimes I would see paper on the floor. And once I walked into a senior leadership meeting holding that piece of paper, and I said, whose job is it to clean this up from our beautiful hallway? And a smart person on our team said, it's a janitor's job. He comes in at night, you know, that's his job. He cleans up all the paper. And I said, you're right. Is anybody in this room who's walked past that paper above picking it up? You know, take a look at the event that you've been at this week, how beautifully and impeccably created, curated for you. They've obsessed about every detail. Look at these beautiful screens. Look at this incredible room. Just the placement of the tables. If you knew what went into, just how to set this room up for your enjoyment, right there. People on the staff going, oh, yeah, I know exactly what that was like. Every detail, carefully thought out. Impeccability. Nobody wondering, whose job is it? Because on the baseball field, everybody's got one job. Everybody's committed to one thing. What is that? What's that one thing? Winning. They want to win a game. That's what all of us want to do. That's what this team here is doing. Igor micro set this room up, created this event for you because that's how they're winning a game. And nobody's wondering about whose job is it, Whose job is it. It's everybody's job. You lead from any position, you lead from any seat. That's what's incredible. When you get buy in, you allow people to be seen and to be heard so that they are empowered to lead from any position on the field. I love ups. I love it because their culture is so interesting. They're very structured. They have rules for everything. Where they put their keys, how they put their keys in the ignition, how they open and close the door, the clothing that they wear. All of that is routine. And yet they empower their drivers just to do what it takes to deliver a package. So when Hurricane Andrew decimated Florida, what were UPS drivers doing? They were delivering packages to people in their cars, Their cars.
