Harvard researcher Elizabeth Doty reports on an interesting dynamic in companies with high engagement and performance: a culture of agreements rather than dictates and assigned tasks. Agreements are shared promises on what matters in how work happens. Agreements work when they are shared, documented and tracked.
People who make and keep agreements outperform people who work by compliance to manager dictates. This is a culture of peer accountability, which as it turns out is the only genuine and sustainable kind of accountability.