From the days of Enron and Worldcom to more recent Wall Street collapses, Ponzi schemes, and political scandals, much has been written about the need for greater accountability in the workplace. Cultures of accountability foster trust, integrity, and sustainable performance. But the reality is that few companies do this well.

Here are six myths that sabotage accountability in the workplace and what you can do about them:

Several months ago, I published an ebook called Creating Your Personal Life Plan. I made it available as a free PDF download for readers who subscribed to my blog via email. So far more than 30,000 people have done so.

However, I have had numerous requests to make the book available in Kindle, Nook, and iBook formats. Unfortunately, the original landscape cover didn’t convert well to portrait. This has required me to reformat the ebook.

I have always been fascinated by the power of incremental change over time. Most people underestimate this. They think they have to take massive action to achieve anything significant.

I am not opposed to massive action. I have used it myself to achieve certain results. But it causes most people give up before they ever start. They just don’t think they can make the investment.

I know what it’s like. You have more to do than you can get done. You’re pulled in a thousand different directions. You can’t ever seem to catch up. And the paperwork is killing you.

As the CEO of Thomas Nelson, I had a great assistant. She managed my calendar, fielded appointment requests, booked my travel, took meeting notes, and a thousand and one other things.

I’m only twenty-seven. Since I finished college and started working, I have had about five years in the “real world” under my belt. However, a lot has happened in that five-year period.

Like most people right out of college, I have held a couple of different positions since entering the workforce. It’s given me a great perspective on different kinds of leaders. It has also made me think about the kind of leader I want to be when I am finally in a leadership position.

This seems to be “cover week“ here on my blog. A few days ago, you gave me your input on a new, revised cover for my e-book Creating Your Personal Life Plan. The input was invaluable. You saw things I didn’t see and helped me more clearly identify my target market. Thank you.

I need your help again with my new book, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. (Curious what a “platform” is? I blogged about it here.) I am finishing the manuscript up now. Thomas Nelson will publish it in April 2012. It includes everything I have personally learned in building my own platform. I can’t wait to share it with you.

A few weeks ago, I spoke at the Building Champions Experience. I spoke on the topic of “Making a Greater Difference Outside the Office.” I specifically focused on how the discipline of life planning had made that possible for me.

Note: I originally learned about life planning in 2001 from Daniel Harkavy. He is the CEO and founder of Building Champions and the author of Becoming a Coaching Leader: The Proven Strategy for Building Your Own Team of Champions.

I first met John Maxwell in 1998 when I joined Thomas Nelson as the Associate Publisher of the Nelson Books division. We were just launching, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, which became his breakout book. It landed on the New York Times bestsellers list, where it remained for months.

John is an international recognized leadership expert, speaker, and author. He has written more than sixty books. Collectively, they have sold more than 20 million copies and been translated into more than fifty languages. In addition, John routinely speaks to Fortune 500 companies, government leaders, and churches.

I believe that the local church is the hope of the world. But for it to reach its redemptive potential, it must be well-led. This means that those of us with leadership gifts have to step up and step it up. We have to take responsibility for our own leadership development.

Here are four steps I use to absorb new ideas and become a better leader:

Organizations spend an enormous amount of money finding just the right talent. Even if they don’t employ professional search firms, they still invest a tremendous amount of time and effort identifying, screening, and interviewing candidates. But often, they don’t spend the same amount of energy trying to retain this talent.

As the infographic below makes clear, there are five reasons why talented people leave their jobs.