wiki_ghostguild/content/wiki/vault-archive--accountability-responsibility.md

title	collection	path	parentDocument	outlineId	createdBy
Accountability & Responsibility	Vault Archive	Vault Archive/Accountability & Responsibility	null	4b28da50-5760-4649-9e7b-a0f220b52059	Jennie R.F.

A cohort discussion facilitated by @Henry Faber

Why We're Talking About This

People use "accountability" and "responsibility" interchangeably. That's interesting and important to unpack - because historically structured studios have confused these words too, and often on purpose, to encourage a type of connection to the company that is unwarranted.

Cohort participants brought up additional reasons to dig into this:

• Corporate versus co-op structures, and how little power in decision-making most people actually have in corporate settings
• Assumptions versus articulated, defined processes
• This is the mechanism by which things happen - where the rubber hits the road
• Concepts like accountability operate differently inside specific structures

How It Works in Historically Structured Studios

This is actually the root of most of the confusion.

Companies in a capitalist structure require capital to get going. There's either an owner who has the money, investors, or some combination. Small companies and big-hearted people might be doing this because they're passionate about the product, the audience, or collaborating with people. But the minute they go into this structure, power dynamics and money step into play.

Capitalism is completely inequitable. It's really all about burning the oxygen for its own growth and not thinking about anyone else - because that's what companies incorporated in North America are legally defined to do.

In a traditional structure:

Owner/Investors → CEO → Directors → Management → Workers

The CEO has one job: steward the company and have its actions be accountable to the owners and investors. Good or ill, whatever happens, it comes down on the CEO's shoulders. If something goes wrong below the CEO, the CEO is accountable for it. (We know that's not entirely true in practice, but that's how it's supposed to work.)

Directors have their areas of specialty or focus. Management sits below them. Workers below that. Any of these folks can have shares, but unless they've put in money themselves, they're always subservient to the people who have - and to those who have put in the most.

Directors, management, and workers have responsibilities in service of the studio or corporation. From getting coffee for a meeting to setting up a giant audience engagement plan with cross-marketing - still just responsibilities. Different levels of intensity, different pay scales, different perks and privileges. But at the end of the day, if these things fail due to an overall bad plan, the CEO is the one accountable to the investors.

People can shirk responsibilities, not be aligned, not have the right tools offered to them, have health issues or systemic barriers. That's why there are policies and performance reviews - those things separate how the job is being done based on expectations set by the job description. But none of that changes what the CEO is ultimately accountable for: serving the best interest of the owner and investors.

This is why a CEO can cut a game entirely. After analysing the costs, it doesn't matter how long the workers worked on it. The CEO's accountability isn't to get the game out there - it's to make sure the investors receive money. They look at the numbers, look at the costs for launching and post-launch support, and say: if we cut this now and the workers, our bottom line goes way up and our investors will be happy.

So if you're a worker and you're not really accountable to any of this, you might be working in a way where you think you're accountable for something and you're not. This is where things get obfuscated. "You're accountable to management." "We're accountable to the budget." No - you're responsible for executing the budget. That's part of your job. But you're not actually accountable for it in these traditional structures.

How It Works in a Co-op

In a worker co-op, the members are driving what's happening. They come together to set the goals and values for the organisation. Directors have legal obligations and responsibilities to make sure the co-op is compliant. Depending on structure, there's management and workers - but unless they're contracted out, they're all considered members.

In a collective where one member gets one vote for decision-making, the accountability lies on everybody. This encourages a flattening of organisational layers and an emphasis on group decision-making.

People still have responsibilities within the co-op. But the difference is that your responsibilities affect how you get your work done in a way that makes you accountable to your other members about how you do that work.

A good example: if an emergency comes up and you can't do a task you're responsible for, and you have the capacity to find someone else to do it or inform people as soon as possible or mitigate how it might affect others - that's understanding you're accountable to your fellow members, even as you pass on the responsibility. In a traditional structure, they throw money at that problem and deploy structural mechanisms that try not to make any one person feel too essential - while also extracting everything they can when that person is available. It's a lot different when you're in a co-op or collective structure. Or at least it should be.

What Does Being Accountable to Values Mean?

This one matters to us because it's a core piece of how GammaSpace operates: we are accountable to each other for upholding our values. That's a strong thing that requires exhaustive discussion and work-through, even when - especially when - it's extremely hard.

One participant described it as "the buck stops here." If something doesn't stand up to a value, it needs to be re-evaluated and changed until it does. The value is the benchmark the thing is being held up to. When we're accountable to our values, the things we do - our responsibilities, how we treat each other - are measured against those values and used as the watermark of: are we doing it?

Another participant called it a much more relationship-focused approach. And it is. Being accountable to values means people are not treated as disposable - not treated as Human Resources with a capital H, capital R. That's not to say people can't be removed or a position made obsolete, but it means you are treating others and are treated as though being a person has value.

This extends further. When someone says "my time as Henry is very valuable to the community," that's lovely to hear. But the next step is: I feel the same way about everybody. I want them to feel the same way. If people aren't feeling valued - if they feel like their contributions aren't being taken seriously or that it wouldn't matter if they disappeared - what can we do about that? That's about being accountable to our values fully and having processes baked into our structure to support it.

One participant put it well: "When all we have is each other, the relationship between values, capacity, and resources is incredibly important." This gets more complicated the moment the collective is responsible and accountable to each of its members for providing living wage, psychological safety, opportunities for growth, and understanding what the limits of scale are based on everyone's goals.

The Tricky Part: Not Disposable, But With Consequences

"The balance between making sure people aren't treated as disposable and also making sure going against values has consequences is a tricky thing."

This came up as a key tension. One participant connected it to rehabilitation and prison abolitionist thinking - the idea that instead of immediately booting someone out for saying something the group didn't like, you take the approach that people should have the bandwidth and the opportunity to self-reflect, change, or inform the group that they're changing. Maybe the group can change with them. The key to preventing disposability is letting people reflect on themselves and a little bit on each other to inform those self-reflections.

But then: what happens when introspection doesn't happen? We're all on different levels of our journey. There are situations where introspection is warranted but isn't triggered. What do you do?

The obvious line is if someone outright refuses introspection - that's clear grounds for dismissal. If someone is refusing to engage in good faith and doesn't want to be held accountable, then yes. But it gets complicated when someone is trying to self-reflect and just isn't very good at it yet. It's a skill, and some people are going to be worse at it than others.

There's also a time component. Sometimes someone can't introspect for six months because they're dealing with something else entirely. And then they come back and say, "Actually, I was dealing with this, and now I've realised there's an issue." How do you hold space for that? These are relationship questions - people to people.

This is where your ability to have conversations, recognise when conflict resolution is possible or not, access external supports, and assess whether something is interpersonal or structural all come into play. These aren't questions with tidy answers, but the more we're aware this happens and reflect on it, the more likely we are to have the kinds of conversations that help us through.

Words Don't Mean the Same Thing

It can't just be a document. It has to be a process - one that is repeated, referred to, and breaks down the language to get a little closer. It'll never be 100%.

For example, at GammaSpace, when we say "challenging systemic norms," a smaller group had a pretty good idea of what that meant. As the membership has grown, we've had to do extensive why, what, and how work on that so we all actually get on the same page.

You can't just say "don't be an asshole" in your code of conduct. What does that mean? This group might have some ideas - say please and thank you, don't interrupt, don't swear in the channel unnecessarily. But that's not enough, because some people might've dealt with a different type of asshole and didn't realise they were being one, or that their response to one was also problematic. That's why it has to be broken down.

And it can't come from the traditional structure where culture is "created" - because if the CEO is accountable to shareholders and it's all about making money, how could the culture not be in service of that? Or at least one-sided - an expectation of everyone below the CEO, but not the CEO themselves?

Companies say "come as you are" but what they mean is: come as someone ready to make us money ASAP. And that has allowed people to be assholes in the culture because they appear to get things done or bully people into producing. "We're a family here" - don't we all know how that goes! My family has some issues. Please don't be like my family.

Stewardship, Not Leadership

Here's a somewhat trick question: is accountability baked into leadership?

In a collective where we're all accountable to each other, is it actually leadership? At GammaSpace, when someone bottom-lines a project or helps organise something in a lead capacity, we refer to it as stewardship. That word is important because stewardship is about understanding the capacity, expertise, and will to take on a collection of tasks and responsibilities on behalf of the co-op. Anyone could do it, assuming they feel they can handle the requirements - intensity, commitment level, skills required. None of those are inherently accountability things in themselves. The accountability part comes from the values and processes the collective has defined together: transparency, reporting, equitable treatment.

One participant pushed back: accountability on the business end and on the project end are entirely different and disconnected. Worker co-op structures don't automatically have accountability baked into project leadership - because the co-op model doesn't know what you're trying to do in your day-to-day operations. That always needs bespoke conversations and structures.

Henry pushed further: but what does that have to do with accountability in a collective setting? If we're all accountable to our values, it's up to everyone to uphold them. The accountability is about whatever values and processes the group has defined together. The responsibilities within a project are a different category. Splitting these hairs matters - because historically structured studios trick and exploit people by conflating the two.

It comes down to processes and tools. Can we divide this up in a way that recognises our commitment to each other and how that commitment informs our work?

The Roommate Problem

One participant brought up the roommate problem - something discussed early in the co-op development process. When you live with a roommate, everything they do drives you up the wall. The dishes, the mess, the chaos. But when you live with a partner you love, those same annoyances exist within a context of understanding. You know who they are as a person, and within the relationship you develop steps, processes, and conversations to deal with the tissues on the table.

The difference is that your roommate is just there. The person you love is someone you've built trust and communication with. You keep track of the fact that they're human and not just an output machine. In a co-op, you need different aspects of relationship to keep it human: play, working time, honest communication. And all of that requires honesty - you can't come into a conversation not telling anyone what's up and then expect them to know.

When You Butt Up Against Capitalism

Even as a co-op, you engage with capitalism. You engage with platform holders, showcases, clients. When you have a transactional relationship with a client, they care about one thing: can the people they hired get this done?

In that situation, you're responsible for doing the job. You can say when you disagree, but the ultimate decision is up to the client. What you're accountable for runs back to your own co-op: are they paying us properly? Are they violating the contract in ways that affect our ability to maintain relationships with our members?

A co-op can amplify its values in these relationships - charge a co-op administration fee, explain what it means, offer to present together about how working with a co-op gets things done. But at the end of the day, if it's not written in the task list, it doesn't change the transactional relationship.

One participant noted the gap between being accountable for doing your job and being accountable for the quality of the end result - and how that absence of linkage is a feature of the studio system, not a bug. Transposing yourself into a traditional studio, you can feel the empathy for what workers deal with daily.

Accountability Performed Versus Accountability Lived

Another participant raised something sharp: in studios they work with, well-intentioned people will have a nice conversation about a problem, all agree it needs to stop, and then factions form behind the scenes to keep the disagreement going. The appearance of accountability sometimes undermines actual accountability. What demonstrates accountability beyond saying "I feel accountable" and acting it out?

This is especially true when people who are trying to make changes from within a traditional structure take on accountability even when it's beyond their control. That creates an unbearable, untenable, unsustainable weight on someone trying to fix the problem from inside the house. It can't be done in a healthy way. That's why it's important, if at all possible, to release yourself from that and work on a different way of doing things.

Carrying Capacity

One of the key concepts that has come into vocabulary through co-op development is carrying capacity. The carrying capacity of a community or organisation is defined by its ability and its engagement with the practice of having difficult conversations - conversations that use the tools, words, and processes you've worked on together collectively.

This is fundamental because it's the only way to start separating and getting through the weeds of accountability, responsibility, personal action, structural change, power dynamics, and the only way to start making the change you want to see in the world.

Practical Tools

Why-What-How framework: Start with why you're talking about something. Then what would you do to structure or address it. Then how would you do those whats. This creates a roadmap of tools and processes that come from breaking down your own language together.

Layers of Effect: How do decisions affect who you're talking about? What are the primary positives? The primary negatives you can imagine? What about those affected one layer out? And one layer out from that? How do you measure that over time?

Reporting and transparency: Transparency of reporting is essential, whether that's a co-working channel with value flow and emojis, a monthly meeting about outcomes, a combination - whatever fits. The reporting models behaviour. People may not read every detailed post, but having something to go back to and reference matters. And if someone says "if only I'd known about this sooner" when they were tagged a week ago - the correct answer in a healthy situation is: I'm responsible for catching up, or I'm responsible for coming to you and saying I'm overwhelmed, can you walk me through this?

Self-evaluation: The individual acts of understanding your own capacities, supports, and time - and being able to evaluate those on a regular basis - are things each person should be responsible for in reporting to their collective.

Conflict resolution processes: Recognising when conflict resolution is possible or not, having external supports available, assessing whether something is interpersonal or structural, and looking at how the collective is being affected by the whole thing.

Summary

Accountability is for big decisions that affect the actual values and goals of an organisation. Responsibility is for tasks in service of those goals. In a traditional structure, these get conflated on purpose to extract more from workers. In a co-op or collective, the work is to keep them distinct while recognising that your responsibilities do affect how you're accountable to your fellow members. The tools for navigating all of this are relational: processes, language, frameworks, and - above all - the ongoing practice of having difficult conversations together.