Tired of accountability systems that start strong and then fizzle out? You’re not alone. Many business leaders, coaches, and managers struggle with inconsistency, believing the fault lies with the system or their team. But what if the real problem is much simpler—and much harder?
Today, Gwen Bortner and Tonya Kubo dive into the surprising truth about consistency. It’s the easiest concept to understand, yet the single hardest habit to maintain in a chaotic business world.
Inside, you’ll discover:
- Why the simplest definition of consistency makes it feel “easy,” and why our nature makes it “hard.”
- The real cost of skipping a check-in (hint: it’s not just lost time, it’s a loss of trust).
- How common leadership excuses like “I don’t want to micromanage” or “It’s not a good use of my time” destroy momentum.
- The powerful, exponential impact consistency has on problem-solving, team safety, and long-term results.
If you find yourself constantly restarting your initiatives, or if your team is quietly wondering how much you truly care about the data they provide, this is the essential read you need. Learn why consistency is the foundation for a truly effective accountability system and how you can commit to “doing the thing” to build unstoppable momentum.
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The Hardest Easy Thing In Business: Consistency
Consistency: Simple To Understand, Hard To Maintain
What if the reason your accountability system isn’t working has nothing to do with your team or what you’re doing or what you’re tracking, but instead has to do with the consistency in which you’re approaching it? We’re kicking off a three-part series where we are unpacking what makes up accountability, what makes it work, and what makes it doesn’t.
In this episode, Gwen is going to talk about why consistency is both the easiest thing to understand when it comes to accountability and yet probably the hardest to maintain. If you find that your check-ins are starting strong but fade over time, this is the one for you. Now, Gwen, you always say, I’ve heard you say this for a long time now, that consistency is both the easiest and the hardest part of accountability. Explain what you mean by that.
It’s the easiest because it is the simplest thing to understand. Who doesn’t understand the word consistent? Now, there are lots of definitions of consistent, like how often are we doing it? We know what consistent means. It’s simple from that standpoint, which I think is why it’s the easiest because it’s not like there’s something that we need to learn or that we need to figure out or that we need to study.
It’s something that we intuitively get right off the bat, thus, the easiest. The hardest because as humans, most of us are naturally chaotic to some degree or another. There are a few humans out there that really are great about consistency and about habit and about everything going in a very consistent way in their work all the time. When we’re recording this, you have just finished a week of doing a public test study, which would be the epitome example of how consistency is not a thing.
A lot of it has nothing to do with you per se. It has to do with the rest of the world and how it impacts you and all of the other things that you don’t have control over. That’s why I think consistency is also the hardest piece of it because if it was only about us and nothing else, most of us wouldn’t have any problem with consistency. We wouldn’t have any problem with habits. We wouldn’t have any problem with a whole lot of things.
However, that’s not the way the world works. We interact with a lot of other people and a lot of other things. Even if we’re relatively isolated, even if we don’t have a big family, even if we aren’t doing it, we still are interacting with a lot of people and have a lot of other things that impact our world. I think that’s why consistency is the hardest piece of it.
How Inconsistency Forms Habits (And Breaks Accountability)
You bring up a good point about the public test study. In fact, I’ll link it here because more people should be invited to the party that is my day-to-day life, getting pulled in a million different directions that I didn’t see coming until they were there. I think it’s interesting that you point out that left to our own devices, siloed from the rest of the world, the average person is consistent. The average person knows off the top of their head what the most important thing is to do.
The average person can stick with it by the end of the day. Maybe not the order that they thought they would or anything like that. It’s all the external forces that start pinging that force that mental reprioritization that goes throughout the day. Something that you and me have both noticed over time, and actually you’re the person who said it best, where things fall off and once feels like an interruption, but the second time it happens, you’re like, “You just developed a new habit.”
You skip a check-in once and it’s like, “It’s okay, there’s a lot going on. I’m giving everybody a gift by not checking in on them this week.” The next week it happens and suddenly, it is easier for you to skip check-ins because that’s your new habit and it’s easier for your people to assume you’re not going to check in because now it’s their habit.
It’s their habit as well.
The first week it was a gift of time. After that, other things just fill the space.
Maybe I’m the only person that this has ever happened to, but things that we feel like are really well-established habits, like brushing our teeth, I can’t remember what the interrupt was, but there was something, and this was years ago, where I had a little change in my routine. It was 3:00 AM in the morning where I rolled over in bed and was like, “I didn’t brush my teeth tonight. Of course, not brushing your teeth one night is not going to be the end of the universe.
Whatever the thing was that interrupted, interrupted the next night as well. On the third day, all of a sudden, it was like, “Oh my god.” I had already lost track that I wasn’t brushing my teeth. It took no time at all for me to lose a habit that I’d had for decades. For things that are that ingrained, to be able to lose them that quickly, imagine the things that aren’t nearly as ingrained.
How easy it is to lose track of it. The consistency piece is the easiest and the hardest. What’s more important is why does it matter? Why does that consistency piece matter? The thing I think most people don’t realize is how important that element is to the value of a real strong and effective accountability system.
Okay, so tell us, why does it matter?
I think the bigger issue here is about making sure that everyone is playing along. This is one of the few places where you really do get a prize for participation because if you aren’t participating, what happens is it very quickly becomes they’re not interested. Accountability is about a two-way conversation. Both parties have to be committed to showing up and participating. My experience is the party most likely to stop participating first is the person holding others accountable.
Accountability is a two-way conversation. Both parties must be committed to showing up and participating. Share on XIt’s the leader because of using the type of thing that you had. There’s a whole lot going on. I’m just going to give them a little time back this week. What this is, is it’s really an excuse. It sounds like a gift, but it’s really an excuse for yourself and not owning it for what it is. The reality is when you have that excuse, it’s easy to make that excuse another time and another time. The only time that the excuse works is if it really is a one-time event that is clearly a one-time event. The example I’ll use is early on before you and I were working together, there would be times that I wouldn’t do my part of the review, but it was a one-time event.
I’m going to be on vacation. I’m not going to be doing anything for work. This is the week I won’t be doing it. I would not present it as at the last moment I just remembered I’m not doing this. I would do it as a planned event. This week, I will not be reviewing on Monday, but I will review next week both this week and the prior week on that Monday. Now, that meant if someone waited for 2 weeks, they could do 2 in 2 weeks and I wouldn’t know.
It was a one-time event. It wasn’t like, “I’m going to be on vacation the next week and the next week.” It wasn’t something that it was easy to make happen again and again. It was a very distinctive piece of it. Without that commitment on both sides, like I said, it starts feeling like make work because no one’s actually paying attention. They don’t actually care about me. It must not actually be important enough for them, so why should it be important for me? It’s all of those pieces. That consistency is about the commitment. The consistency in the bigger picture is about keeping momentum going on a long-term basis.
Yeah, but it sounds to me like what you’re also saying, though not directly, is that consistency creates trust.
Consistency Builds Trust (And Leaders Often Break It First)
I didn’t say that but that is exactly true.
I know from my work with communities that trust is what creates safety in organizations. When you do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it, like you said you were going to do it, people don’t just trust that one thing, they start to trust everything you say. That makes them feel safe. You now become a safe person.
When they say that they aren’t going to yell at me, they’re not going to yell at me. When they say as long as I do this, then I’m in their good graces, then that is the bare minimum to be in their good graces. The moment you stop doing the things you said you would do or you stop doing them the way that you said you would do them, then it calls into question everything you say. I don’t think it’s conscious. I think it’s very subconscious.
Consistency creates trust. The moment you stop doing what you said you would—or stop doing it the way you said you would—you call everything you say into question. Share on XThere’s no way that people are processing that in a very linear, conscious way, but it absolutely is happening behind the scenes.
How have you seen that play out?
One example was someone who was part of our initial group of testing on using the accountability system for their own team. This didn’t actually happen with their team, but it happened with another one of their clients and because they had been in the process, they were able to see the whole picture and it was like, “This is what’s going on here.” Their client had an accountability process.
Part of her intake process of working with a new client is to do a bit of an interview survey with all of the employees of that client to talk about what’s working and what’s not. What came up consistently was, yeah, we’re supposed to do this accountability report, but no one ever looks at it, so most of the time, I don’t take the time to do it. When she talked to the owner of the company, the owner says, “Yeah, no one does their accountability report. No one’s willing to be held accountable.”
She said, “But are you looking at it and responding? Are you checking in that they’re doing it?” Their response was, “I shouldn’t have to parent adults.” It was one of those things that was like, “Yeah, you don’t understand that it’s a two-way conversation.” Their piece of the equation is, “I’ll do the report.” Your piece of the equation is, “I will read it and respond to it and actually paying attention to the data that you’re giving me.”
In their mind, it was like, “That’s me parenting adults,” and it’s like, “No, that’s not parenting adults. That’s actually having an accountable relationship.” They had broken the trust. They’re not actually going to look at it, so why should I do it? Of course on the other side, they were seeing it was like, “They’re not doing it, so it doesn’t work.” It’s like, “No, it’s both halves of the equation.” This was another example of the person who broke it first was the leader.
Here’s what I’m hearing. First of all, accountability is a two-way commitment. We’ve said that on the show before. It’s a partnership and as you’re illustrating, it’s a partnership between, generally it’s the leader and a team member. It could be a contractor and their client. There’s a lot of different ways to have that accountability, but it is a partnership.
It could be peers. There’s a lot of ways to do it, but yeah, we’re using the traditional version for the most part.
It’s a partnership. Generally speaking, the consistency falls apart on the person who has agreed to be the holder of the accountability. You brought up what I think is a very common excuse, the whole, “I shouldn’t have to parent adults.” I have heard that. I’ve heard that a lot actually in volunteer environments, like they’re a volunteer, they’re an adult, etc. Other things that I have heard that I would love for you to address is, “I don’t want to micromanage.” the other thing I’ve heard is like, “This isn’t a good use of my time.” What do you say to those sorts of responses?
Common Leadership Excuses That Undermine Consistency
Micromanagement is the ultimate excuse that everyone is using now as the reason not to do something. “I don’t want to micromanage.”
Everything’s micromanaging like, “I don’t want to micromanage my two-year-old using the restroom, so I don’t ask them if they have to go potty.”
That’s an extreme example, but it actually feels like that these days. Almost any time when I question why someone doesn’t do something with my clients that I’m working with directly, almost always it’s like, “I don’t want to micromanage,” and it’s like, that is so not even close to micromanagement. It’s management. All management has now become micromanagement, which is not true. To me, anytime like 99% of the time when someone says, “I don’t want to micromanage,” that is just this universal excuse.
What I start asking is like, “What does actually micromanagement mean to you?” What they basically define is managing. It’s like, “That is not micromanagement. That is so not even close to micromanagement.” That’s just an excuse. What accountability is, part of it is managing. It is saying I want to make sure that we’re on the same page, that you’re working on things that is actually good use of your time in a way that’s going to be productive for the company long-term.
None of that’s micromanagement. Real accountability, which we’ve talked about many times before, is about reflection and problem-solving. Problem-solving is never micromanagement. Ever. When I hear that, that’s just an excuse. It’s the whole, “I don’t actually want to do the work,” or, “I’m afraid to do the work because I might get to micromanage.”
Real accountability is about reflection and problem-solving. Share on XThe initial work, that is not micromanagement. That is not the issue. The better use of time, that’s another one of those things that we tell ourselves. It’s like, “I spend 30 minutes in my one-on-one meeting with them.” That 30 minutes could have been used to get 3 things done. The thing is, most people will use that 30 minutes to do 3 of what I’m going to loosely term the wrong things.
What we’re really doing with accountability is making sure that we’re focusing on the right things at the right time in the right order and not spinning our wheels when there’s a solution that together, you and I can figure out and we can move forward and keep making progress. It’s like, is truly that 30 minutes better used? Probably not. Now, if it’s two hours, yeah, probably. If it’s done well, real accountability doesn’t take that long. It’s very focused.
That’s the other thing. It’s like if it’s taking you an inordinate amount of time, you might be doing it wrong. We have accountability involves a two-way partnership and that’s part of what makes this consistency piece difficult. The leader is typically the one who breaks the consistency. That level of inconsistency erodes trust. When there’s not trust, then we don’t have that perception of safety in our work environment.
Some other things that I’ve heard you say in this conversation is when the leader starts canceling things, whether it’s the check-in or they just, whether it’s a one-on-one meeting I should say, or it’s some asynchronous check-in, what they’re silently communicating is their priorities like, “This is no longer a priority.” I worked in an environment where all new employees got a weekly one-on-one with the team lead for three months.
Consistency Signals Priority (Through Cancellations & Rescheduling)
However, your one-on-ones went down to monthly because the assumption was is once you weren’t a new employee, you didn’t need that frequent touchpoint anymore. It was really abrupt to go from having a weekly check-in to now a monthly check-in, even when you knew it was coming. It was like, “Okay, so I’m no longer the big priority. There are other priorities now.” That’s probably not the best example of the case, but I think everybody has had that experience where they used to have consistent frequent contact with an individual and then the consistency falls off.
Another version of that is where they say, “I need to reschedule.” it’s not even that I’m canceling, but I’m rescheduling. What it’s saying is whatever just bumped you was more important than you. Now, that can be true, but that can’t be true all the time. What I’m saying it can be true is if you work in a larger organization and the CEO who almost never talks to you is saying, “I need to have a meeting with you,” you probably can’t say, “I already have another commitment with one of my employees,” unless that is part of the culture of the organization. You can say, “I’ve already got a one-on-one scheduled at that point. Is there any way we can find a slightly different time so I don’t have to reschedule that?”
Sometimes, it’s like, there’s three different organizations coming out of town. This is the only time everyone can meet. Okay, so that’s a one-off. If you’re rescheduling all the time, that means most everything is more important than this meeting. That’s back to the trust level of where am I on your importance meter? Your direct report should be really important to you because they’re the ones that are getting the work done within your organization. Part of it is having enough boundaries to also say, “No, I can’t have a meeting then. I already have a meeting then.” that’s part of creating that consistency for it.
I think we have done a great job of explaining why consistency is the most important aspect of accountability and how if you don’t have consistency, any accountability system is going to break down. I think part of the consistency problem also has to do with the systems that we use. Why do you think the consistency piece of most accountability systems collapse? What makes us inconsistent?
The main thing is where we started at. Life happens. Things that are outside of our control happen. The first is having what I’m going to call a backup plan. For us, we do accountability check-ins on Mondays. We have informed people that if it’s a national holiday, we probably won’t do them until Tuesday. Now, we just passed a national holiday that was on Monday and we still did them on Monday because I had some time. I just sat down and got them done, but I wouldn’t have considered it a failure if I didn’t do them until Tuesday. That’s a known thing, so we make a choice there.
In our world now, if I’m not available, you cover. That is also a piece of it that if I’m on vacation, I don’t have to say I’m not going to do it for a few weeks. You just jump in and do it and that works, so having a backup person if you’re in some sort of organization. One of the other things, and this is what we do, is who holds you accountable to holding your people accountable. That’s the challenge that I think most small business people struggle with. There is a challenge at the top of who’s actually holding the top person accountable for doing the work.
Are you saying that consistency really is only about the accountability process or do you think consistency affects other aspects of the business?
Consistency Creates Momentum & Long-Term Results
It definitely is a key element in the accountability process. If it’s missing, the accountability process will fall apart. That consistency piece also is the piece that creates the momentum. I think it’s in Good to Great that they talk about the flywheel. It’s what creates the flywheel. It’s what allows things to keep building on themselves going forward. As we move into talking about the second and third elements, that consistency piece is where that’s going to actually start showing results because you’re building momentum over time.
Once people get in that habit of reflecting, problem-solving, building that trust like you talked about, that they know that they can really get the solutions that they’re looking for and that the support is actually there, then that’s where we start gaining a little bit of ground. Over time, that consistency actually creates that exponential curve where all of a sudden, it’s like, “Holy moly, we are getting so much more done than we did before.” It’s not really because they’re putting in more work. It’s that they aren’t having to, I’ll say, restart and/or make adjustments so much further into the process.
In my experience with the accountability process and the consistency that I’ve been able to enjoy as part of your team, what I’ve seen happen is that problems are identified and sometimes even solved before becoming urgent. That alone, I think, reduces the amount of reactionary decision-making that has to be done.
That’s where this exponential curve happens because what we don’t realize until there’s enough consistency for a long enough period of time. Both those things have to be in place. It’s why it really is that exponential curve where we gain a little, gain a little, all of a sudden, it’s like, “We’re off to the races.” We don’t realize how much time we’re spending rethinking and reworking work that a lot of work has already been done on. As you said, when you’re able to do that so much earlier than all of a sudden, it’s like, “I can just keep moving forward,” and all of a sudden, that energy really starts paying off.
Anything else on this topic of consistency that you think is important to address before we close the episode, but also before we move on to the other aspects of the series?
No, I really think that consistency piece, like we said at the beginning, it is the simplest to understand. There’s nothing difficult or magical about it. We know what needs to be done. It’s technically easy because we know what needs to be done. It’s super hard because we live in chaotic environments where there’s very little that we actually control the way that we hope that we control.
Consistency in this case really is about boundaries of saying “This is important, this is a priority, I’m not going to not do it for all of the other thousands of things that are likely to come up,” because they will. That’s just the reality. It really is about saying “No, this has to be the thing.” As with all things, you will fall off the horse at some point. The trick is to not let that be the thing that just keeps you on the ground, but instead say “Okay, totally failed at this week, next week I’m back in and I’m doing the thing.”
Do not allow the one false step that will happen from time to time because I assure you, it will. It happens to all of us from time to time. Get back on it and do it again because a little inconsistency from time to time will not erode trust. It won’t do any of those things in a particular incident. It is the consistency of the inconsistency that actually erodes trust.
A little inconsistency from time to time won’t erode trust. It’s the consistency of the inconsistency that actually does. Share on XI think this episode stands really well on its own because I think anybody could walk away from this episode right now and say, “I’m just going to commit to doing what I say I do, the way I say I’ll do it, when I say I will do it,” and instantly see a huge improvement in both personal and their professional lives. I really would encourage you to come back to our next episode because the next episode, I think, touches on the sustainability piece and the effectiveness piece better than anything else.
In the next episode, we’re going to talk about focus and why a big part of effective accountability is not that you are paying attention to everything, but paying attention to the right things. Make sure to join us for that. I would say if this episode has made you realize that consistency is an issue for you, then why not take a step toward a process to being consistent in a very easy, easy way, which is to sign up for Gwen’s Really Good Question email.
Gwen holds that space of consistency for you by sending you an email every single Friday. Not with more information, because the last thing you need is more on your list, but with just a really good question for you to reflect on. It’s a strategic prompt that helps you think like a CEO of your business and you get to spend 5 minutes thinking on it, 15, whatever makes sense for you, or you could just archive it and just wait for the next week. That’s all up to you.
If you sign up at www.tonyakubo.com/question, you’ll start getting those emails on Fridays and if you ever choose to respond, you get a personal response from Gwen, or like she said in this episode, if she’s not available, then I will step in. Usually, the responses come from Gwen. All right, well, we will see you next time when we are talking about focus.
Mentioned in This Episode
About Your Hosts
Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.
Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.
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