Obama wants to know "whose ass to kick!"

As BP struggles to contain the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, and businesses and communities across a swathe of coastline brace themselves for the economic and environmental impacts of oil washing ashore, President Obama told NBC last week that he wants "to know whose ass to kick". Obama is not the first leader to talk about accountability. President Truman famously had a sign on his desk saying "the buck stops here", tapping into the value that we place on individuals who take responsibility.

This emphasis on having clear Accountability resonates strongly for us at BlueCamroo. There are lots of Task Management and Project Management systems on the market, but we believe we’ve produced something special in terms of Accountability Management.

So what's the difference between Task Management and Accountability Management?

Simply, most Project Management and Task Management systems enable a Project Manager or co-worker to Assign a task to another person. BlueCamroo does this too (and also automatically sends the Assignee a system message so they know what is required), but it does one more thing as well: BlueCamroo requires the Assignee to Accept the task. By requiring Acceptance (which is also confirmed in a message back to the person who originally created the task, and logged in History), BlueCamroo ensures that not only is someone tasked to do every job; someone is accountable.

So say Jane tasks Harry to create a draft proposal, and Harry accepts (he's become accountable for the task), but then finds he doesn't have time and wants to ask his colleague David to do the draft instead. BlueCamroo allows Harry to Reassign the task to David, but guess what – until David accepts the task, Harry still shows as accountable. It's only when David accepts responsibility and accountability for the task that Jane's system updates to show David will be giving her the draft proposal, and Harry is out of the loop. And that's what makes an Accountability Management System more than just a Task Management System – one, and only one, individual has explicit, acknowledged responsibility for each task.

So if you only want to be sure whom in your organization you asked to do a particular task, send them an email, or use any project collaboration tool. If you want to know who in your organization has accepted responsibility to perform each and every recorded task, check out BlueCamroo.