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How often, do you, the event planner  have a client or vendor who promises to return your call, get you a quote, give you their most recent change, etc. and you don’t hear from them when they said that they would call.

How often does a venue, or other potential vendor tell you, the event planner, that they’ll get you a proposal in 5 days, and you receive nothing.Then you call them back to receive nothing but "oh, we've been swamped".

How often do you find others in your meeting planning team will just make do, rather than responding with the best solution possible.

Or, better yet, your vendor or colleague, promises ABC, and only provides AB with a shrug of shoulders?

This is more than good or bad business practice. It’s something more personal than that.

 It’s accountability.

What does accountability mean to you? To whom are you accountable? Whether it's to your family, co-workers, your boss, your clients, your vendors, your volunteer stint, your quitting smoking, losing 5 pounds, writing those thank yous. being honest about what you can do and will do.

Recently, I I asked this question of the members of the MECO list (MEetings COmmunity) and following are some of the answers. You’ll find a common thread runs through these. I hope that you like what you read and will comment on accountability as this is so important in our every day life, both personal and in business and in the larger global picture.

From Susan Blaine:

At work:

Managers

Client

Colleagues

At home:

Husband

Animals

(no babies yet!)

From Sue Walton:

•   myself

•  my family

•  my clients-the people who sign the venue contracts

•               my participants

From Dianne Davis:

 1.      God

2.      Myself

3.      Husband

4.      Family

5.      Friends

6.      Clients

7.      Society

8.      Country

9.      Less fortunate

I believe they are the same whether work or home life.  We are one person.  And negotiating the list just doesn’t work for me. 

From Adrian Segar:

There is more than one way of thinking about accountability.

The most common definition is that accountability is doing what you

say you will do. From that point of view, my aim is to be accountable

to everyone. But that requires perfection (in the sense that we need

to be able to perfectly predict what may happen in the future, which

none of us can do), and that leads to a second definition that is

different but more realistic.

The second definition of accountability concentrates on being able to

learn and acquire knowledge. Accountability is the willingness to

account for the events, experience, results, beliefs, attitudes, and

assumptions in life for the power of learning. This creates organizing

power in your life.

From Patti Shock:

You have to have both accountability and responsibility.  To have one without the other is a recipe for trouble.

Just think about having responsibility without being accountable for your actions. 

Or being accountable, without being the one that has the responsibility for making the decisions.

From Beth Cooper-Zobott:

I think that for me, accountability means that as I relate to myself, myfamily, my friends, my company, my clients and my co-worker, I have an obligation to all of the above to do my best and strive for personal and professional excellence (not perfection).   This is the way I show up every day:  ready to work, ready to be a positive factor in others' lives, ready to share, wait my turn, be polite, be thoughtful and not think that I exist in a vacuum and that my actions have no impact.  

From Pat: These folks have really good ideas of accountability, don't you think? 

So what does this have to do with the title of my blog: Professional Event Production?

Everything, becuase if you're not held accountable or don't think about being accountable, none of your talent, capability or creativity means a thing. Essentially, your accountability to yourself is the bottom line.