Boardroom boot camp: a three-part series on solving Canada’s productivity woes, one workplace at a time

When we reward excellence, we inspire it, and when we tolerate mediocrity, we breed it, writes Howard Levitt. It’s time employers and employees rediscover that excellence depends on accountability. Photo by Pexels/Postmedia files

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This trilogy is not about nostalgia. It is about economic survival. If we continue to reward mediocrity it will lead to ruination. To remain successful as a society, we need leaders who are fair, fearless, and who believe in the value of accountability, consequences and merit. Here’s the first, on accountability.

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Walk into almost any Canadian workplace today, public or private, corporate or not-for-profit, and you will encounter the same invisible contagion: a quiet, polite, bureaucratic mediocrity.

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No one says it out loud, but everyone feels it. Meetings multiply. Decisions stall. Deadlines slip. Excuses flourish. And those responsible for the failure rarely face consequences.

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It is not inflation, technology or foreign competition that poses the greatest risk to Canadian prosperity. It is the erosion of accountability.

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Once upon a time, jobs were earned, results were measured and consequences followed. Employees understood that performance, not personality, determined success. Employers could act decisively when standards were not met. But in today’s risk-averse, HR-inflated, grievance-soaked culture, “accountability” has become a dirty word.

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In too many organizations, discipline is treated as cruelty and expectations as “unrealistic.” The mere act of confronting underperformance is often now considered “bullying.” The inevitable result: stagnation disguised as inclusion, cowardice dressed up as compassion.

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The pandemic did not cause this, but it accelerated it. Remote work blurred boundaries, performance metrics softened and entitlement metastasized. A generation of employees became convinced that flexibility was a right, not a privilege — and that “self-care” could justify almost any dereliction.

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As an employment lawyer, I see this play out daily. Employees who are rarely in the office but still expect full compensation. Managers terrified of disciplining lest it trigger a complaint. Employers settling frivolous claims to avoid headlines. HR departments — originally designed to serve management — too often function as employee advocacy offices, paralyzing instead of empowering leadership.

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The result? A workforce that is more expensive, less productive and increasingly untouchable.

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The most damaging figure in today’s workplace is not the lazy employee but the unfireable one. The employee who has mastered the art of plausible deniability, of cloaking incompetence in procedural protection. The one who files a complaint or goes off on disability the moment discipline looms. The one who knows that employers, weary of risk and litigation, will often pay them handsomely just to go away.