If you want to make progress in your commercial cleaning business, you need to crush failure. And there’s nothing I’ve found that makes this more effective than accountability. When I look in the mirror each morning, I ask myself one question: “What is in my way today?” Not what’s stopping the world. Not what other people are doing or not doing. What am I responsible for? That’s the question every business owner needs to ask themselves. And to be blunt even the boss needs to be accountable to someone.

I’ve been in the service industry long enough to know that excuses are the enemy of growth. They’re everywhere. People blame traffic, the weather, their employees, their customers and the economy. It’s natural for people to blame anything but themselves. I hear it constantly from my consulting clients. It’s not uncommon for business owners to say, “My employee didn’t show up.” “We couldn’t reach that person.” “I was mad at them, so I didn’t communicate the task.” And the list goes on. But here’s the hard truth. Every day you build a culture at your workplace. If you allow excuses, you’re building a culture that enables failure.

Accountability Crushes Failure

The buck stops at the top. Always. If you’re an owner and you’re making excuses, you’re giving everyone in your organization permission to make them too. You’re setting the culture, the standard, and the expectations. Your people watch how you handle adversity, accountability, and failure. If they see you deflecting blame, they’ll do the same thing.

I learned this the hard way when consulting with business owners who claimed their systems were broken. But after digging deeper, the problem was not the system. It was acceptance. They had accepted mediocrity. They had accepted status quo. They had accepted that “someone else” was always at fault. Once we identified the root cause and they took ownership of their part, everything changed.

Failure and a Sticky Floor

Let me give you a real example. In my commercial cleaning business, a client recently complained that one of their floors was consistently sticky because it was being cleaned with a wet-jet. That seemed odd to me. We would never use a wet-jet. After digging into this, I discovered the issue. My cleaners on that site were using a wet jet, because it was available and easier. But a wet jet is designed for residential use, not commercial spaces. The solution? Use the mop and bucket we provided with the proper dilution rate. The issue wasn’t the equipment; It was that we hadn’t enforced the Standard Operating Procedures strongly enough. I could blame the team or the shift manager. Each had their part to play. But in the end, that’s on me, as the owner.

Challenges are NOT Failure

I also understand that in the real-world, situations happen. If an employee gets in a car accident on the way to a job, that might not be their fault. It’s certainly not the boss’s fault. But resolving the situation at work IS the boss’s responsibility. If you cannot resolve that in a reasonable time, here’s what is our fault: Not having a backup plan.

Service Agreements to Bypass Failure

A service business can’t hang a sign on the window like a restaurant and say, “We’re closed today.” We have contracts. We have commitments. When something goes wrong, we find a solution. That might include pulling coverage from another account, having a manager step in, or having floaters built into the system. Looking back, its important to sniff out a bad contract before you sign it.

The turning point for my business came when I committed to accountability. I started having weekly accountability calls with my partner where we held each other’s feet to the fire. At first, I made excuses. Then I stopped. I said, “I failed this past week.” And suddenly, everything started happening. Things began moving. Momentum returned. Growth accelerated.

Accountability is kryptonite to failure

If you’ve been making excuses to yourself, to your employees, or worse to your customers, it’s time to stop. Look in the mirror. Take responsibility. And then build the systems and processes that prevent failure from happening in the first place. We all produce better when we grow out of chaos.

You don’t have to do this alone 

If you’re ready to stop the cycle of excuses and build a business built on accountability, I’m here to help. Visit my products section to reserve a consultation. I offer 1-hour, 2-hour, 3-month, and 6-month packages designed to help you put the safeguards in place that actually work. Your business and your team are waiting for you to lead with accountability.