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Americans are often at their best in a crisis, but it doesn’t take a crisis for an organization to perform effectively and excel, says Mark Samuel, an internationally recognized author and consultant who specializes in accountability-based culture change.

“Greed can come into play in any organization when someone is putting their interest and needs above their customers, or even the other departments that they work with,” said Samuel, author of “Creating the Accountable Organization: A Practical Guide to Performance Execution” and two other books on accountability. “So on a large scale, you see it in the crisis that’s happening in the financial world, and on a smaller scale, you see it all the time within organizations.”

Samuel, whose Los Angeles consulting firm, Impaq, works with clients that include American Express Co., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Universal Studios Inc., visited Des Moines for the first time last week to speak at a health and productivity executive forum hosted by Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Samuel said he has observed dramatic changes in organizations that adopted accountable practices, such as morale increasing by 25 percent, and on-time performance increasing from 20 percent of projects to 80 percent.

“The exciting part of increasing accountability in a culture is that you improve your performance, you improve your customer satisfaction because now your customers can count on you, and you improve morale because people can start depending on each other,” he said.

Samuel’s focus on accountability began in the mid-1980s as he was working with a company on team building. In a followup visit, he asked, “So how’s the team?'”

They said, “Oh, the team’s not functional at all, but individually we just loved the experience,” which caused Samuel to spend the next couple of years studying what causes breakdowns in team building and training.

“The one pattern that kept showing up was a lack of accountability, both personally and cross-functionally,” he said.

One of the biggest misconceptions about accountability is the idea that there is no room for mistakes, Samuel said.

“The truth is, the first thing we’re accountable for is being human, and as human beings, we’re going to make mistakes,” he said. “The real key to accountability is, how committed are we to stay the course of our desired outcomes? One of the most important competencies is developing a proactive recovery plan which anticipates what might go wrong so that we can get back on track as soon as possible.”

Nor can problems be solved by firing top officers, Samuel said. “It’s really being accountable for solutions, being accountable for your goals, and what does it take to accomplish that,” he said.

Results are tied to habits, and an organization has to move together to change those habits to achieve better results, he said. “And if you are changing as a group, you have a built-in culture of support.”