Alex's Story

The company was switching over to a new management app. It would impact everyone in the organization in some way. So the decision was made that everyone needed training; it was a contractual requirement from the software vendor because they knew success was unlikely if people didn’t get trained. 

The method of ensuring this training was straightforward. The trainer had a printout of all employees. Each was assigned to a session. To track this, they needed each person to sign the report, next to their name, as they arrived for training. That’s how they would assure everyone’s attendance. After each session, Alex (the assigned trainer) validated that every line on the report, showing those who were scheduled for that session, had an appropriate signature.  

Fast forward a few months. After the rollout, the software was being populated with faulty data. This should have been covered in training. So the software company was getting blamed for inadequate training materials. When they all checked a little more deeply, they found that a number of senior staffers had signed in, but didn’t actually sit through the training. Then they told their team to do the same. They signed next to their name on the report. Then left before the session started. “Too busy”, they later explained. Alex was reprimanded because the faulty system data had to be corrected and the people had to be trained. Again. Total cost to the company was over $300,000.

This was a blow to Alex. And it was confusing. He did what he was told. That’s what had always worked for him. But not this time. 

This time, something went wrong and he was being blamed. That didn’t seem fair. And, Alex thought, why didn’t his boss protect him? He was the victim here. And even though he had seen it happen elsewhere in the company, he didn’t think it would happen to him. 

He considered changing jobs. That’s what people seem to do when they’re unhappy. Or maybe he needed to change his approach to fit in better. Maybe he needed to get better at lining up his excuses and finding others to blame when things go wrong. He certainly saw a lot of people who were good at that. But that was a shameful way of thinking. It ran contrary to his basic nature. He wanted to deliver results, not excuses. 

Thinking back honestly, he had always taken the easy way. He had accepted his assignments. He didn’t have to think about it. He was told what to do. And he did it. But he never asked why it mattered. He never took it upon himself to question how it should be performed. He simply assumed that his boss knew best. Now he recognized that if he had asked those questions and been just a bit bolder, he would have seen the bigger picture. And he would have given himself a greater chance to succeed. That’s who he wanted to be. 

Over the following months,  he started seeing that pattern elsewhere. Those who got ahead were the ones who owned their assignments. They fully used the authority that was available to them to get things done. 

And that’s when Alex recognized that there were two groups of people in his organization. There were those did what they were told, and when things went wrong kept their heads down and blamed someone else. They usually kept their jobs, but were rarely the ones tagged for bigger things. And, in the other group, were those who fully owned their responsibilities. They weren’t passive. They made things happen. And when things went wrong, they stepped up even more and fixed them rather than blame others. In the end, they delivered results that mattered.

They were the ones who were consistently being given greater opportunities.   

This was an astonishingly simple realization. Two groups. Each delivered on the small challenges. But only one approached big challenges with a system for success. 

For them, success was a process that they owned. 

And that’s what this section of TRM is about.