Almost every organization wants to increase accountability, yet the road to an accountable culture is often rocky, narrow, and slippery. Most executives can quote books, articulate models, and share statistics about accountability, yet the gap between knowing and doing remains wide.

What I often see in the field is intellectualizing rather than embodiment. Intellectualizing is about “head knowledge,” and embodiment is about taking actions until the actions become habits that turn into ways of being. This post is about three distinct barriers to creating an accountable culture and what to do to shorten the gap between ideas and action.