If storytelling is a better system of accountability, because it empowers and because it flips the perspective of accountability around, how do we start by making people better storytellers. And how do we ensure that those stories get told?
Fortunately, that’s not the only model for accountability we have. Webster’s 1913 defines accountability as being “called on to render an account.” To render an account is to tell a story. In this way, an account becomes something you give—something you observe, come to understand, and then narrate. Being accountable in this model means being the storyteller rather than the fall guy. And because stories are perhaps the best technology we have for learning—for passing knowledge and understanding along from person to person—this form of accountability privileges the acquisition of wisdom over the carrying out of punishment.
