When an employee fails to solve a critical issue, the default management reaction is often rushing to termination. Recounting a costly situation where an agreed-upon sales fix stalled for six weeks, the Connect & Convert team examine why these breakdowns happen and who is truly at fault.

The missing step is usually solved with the ATO framework: Ask, Teach, Own.

Watch above or read below.

Dennis Collins: This is very common, where problems are identified, and problems don’t get solved.

Leah Bumphrey: But here, you thought you had someone in there to solve problems. You saw a problem, that he obviously hadn’t seen. Or he’s just, tail between his legs, “I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it.”

Dennis Collins: Yeah.

Leah Bumphrey: And with that, you wait six weeks. So you gotta have clear… Any kind of target, you need a clear, “I’m talking about this next week, or two weeks.”

Dennis Collins: Oh, great. Leah, so I should’ve fired him, right?

Leah Bumphrey: No. This is a real person, Dennis. 

Dennis Collins: Yeah. But you said… Well, you got this clock ticking, a six-week clock. If he doesn’t do it in six weeks, so what? What happens at the end?

Leah Bumphrey: I don’t understand why you waited six weeks. Did he think he had six weeks? Was he on holidays? 

Dennis Collins: Well, again… All right.

Leah Bumphrey: You don’t just fire someone.

Dennis Collins: No. But you’ve been around the sales goods.

Leah Bumphrey: You make them quit. You make them quit. We all know that that…

Dennis Collins: Yeah. I understand that. But the point here is, what do I do? I’m bleeding revenue. This guy is being paid to fix the problem. He agreed there was a problem, he agreed to fix it. And he didn’t do it. Whether it’s six weeks or six months, it doesn’t make any difference. He didn’t do it.

Leah Bumphrey: Is there progress being made? Was there anything happening? 

Dennis Collins: No.

Leah Bumphrey: Nothing?

Dennis Collins: Nada.

Paul Boomer: All right. So did you, at any point in time, Dennis, ask the person, “Why is this taking so long? I expected this to take three weeks. Explain to me why the delay.”

Dennis Collins: Yep. Okay. Good question, Boomer. “Well boss, this is complicated. We’re talking about changing, modifying a sales process, and that doesn’t happen overnight. The salespeople have been doing it this way, for so long. And now, we’re gonna ask them to do it another way. We can’t just snap a finger and change sales process.”

Leah Bumphrey: Right away, what he’s saying is he’s gonna ask… Hasn’t he asked already?

Dennis Collins: Well, he is apparently in the process of refining where the flaw is, and training the salespeople how to do that. Now, you guys have all tried to train people. How long does it take to train somebody to do something? A week? 24 hours? Two weeks? How long?

Leah Bumphrey: Depends. Again, you’re forgetting the person. It depends on the person. It depends on what they’ve been doing already, and what the change is. If you hire someone off the street that’s never done anything before, it’s gonna take a longer process. If they’re fully committed, it might take a little bit less. But this guy sounds kind of… Was he really committed to what it is that you’re doing?

Dennis Collins: That’s a great question, Leah. What do you think? I think you’re advocating for… If you waited six weeks for a change to occur, he’s not committed.

Leah Bumphrey: No. I mean, think about… We were all parents. When my, now, big, six-foot-four guys were just tiny, they knew, “You do this. And if you don’t do it, then this is gonna happen.” This is how humans work. This is how our brains work. WizardAcademy.org that sponsors us, that’s when you teach, where we’ve all learned so much about human behavior. But it’s pretty basic: it’s carrot or stick.

Dennis Collins: Carrot or stick.

Paul Boomer: I keep going back to… Dennis, I keep going back to… Okay. It was taking six weeks. He said it was complicated. You can’t just snap your fingers and it be done. No, you can’t. But it’s still on your onus, on your shoulders as the leader, to ask, “Okay, again, why is it taking so long? What’s preventing you from making a little bit more progress? And oh, by the way, what support do you need from me to make it go a little bit faster?”

Dennis Collins: Fantastic.

Leah Bumphrey: See Paul, all of a sudden, Dennis is the one with the big heart here. I think this is a friend of yours. I’ve seen this happen. I’ve worked for people who had buddies that were the ones working for them. It’s like, “Oh, poor little guy. I hired him. I gotta help him.” Your heart was too big in this situation, and I don’t say that to you very often.

Dennis Collins: Don’t expose me like that, please. You’re damaging my reputation.

Leah Bumphrey: You got those big boy panties on. This is serious stuff.

Dennis Collins: Well, it is. And luckily, as I said, I made a mistake. This guy, it wasn’t his fault. You know whose fault it was? It was my fault. And I’ll tell you why. Because I did not properly diagnose the situation, okay? So I learned to do three things before I made a judgment, whether it’s the system, the process, or the person: ask, teach, and own. What does that mean, ask?

You guys said numerous times, “Find out what’s the whole impact of the problem. Talk to the people who are in the problem. Who are the people that are experiencing the problem? Find out what’s wrong. Get as much feedback as you can get. Learn everything you can learn about the problem, first.” Second, “Ask yourself a question: what skills does this man need? What help does this man need? What does he need that he doesn’t currently have, to fix what we already identified as this problem?” I would say to you that I learned a hard lesson. It’s usually not the person. It’s their skills. Their skill level is not… You assumed that it’s here; and it’s only here. I thought he had this.

Leah Bumphrey: The question for me is, why a person assumes that? 

Dennis Collins: Well, because we’re human, and they assume it. Yeah.

Leah Bumphrey: Friendship clouds, length of time they’ve been in there, maybe, the people working under him you’re not so sure of, because you weren’t the one that hired them.

Dennis Collins: That’s right. The first cloud, though, in most small businesses is, “It’s the people, stupid. You got the wrong people.” I push back on that. I would have said that 30 years ago, probably. I don’t say that today. I don’t say that today, because I learned the lesson the hard way. This guy was a good guy, that did not have the skill that he needed to make this change. Not everybody has every skill.

Leah Bumphrey: Okay. So what’s the solution for somebody listening…

Paul Boomer: I’m gonna pause that for just a moment. I’m not gonna say, “It’s the people, stupid; It’s the leadership, stupid.”

Dennis Collins: That’s more accurate. That’s accurate, Paul. Of course, you’re always more accurate. You always listen to what Leah and I say, and you come up with the right answer. And you’re right.

Paul Boomer: But I want to hear what Leah asked. I want to hear the answer to Leah.

Dennis Collins: Go ahead, Leah. What was your question?

Leah Bumphrey: It irritates me, when somebody in a position of authority… The person in authority, all of a sudden, throws themselves on their sword. “Oh, look at this. Oh, it was my fault. Mea culpa. I’ve done this. I’ve done this.” If you really mean it, then just fix it. It really bugs me, because it’s too easy to do that after the fact. Meanwhile, you’ve damaged this guy for six weeks, who was stressed out of his mind not knowing what to do. How do we avoid that? How do you avoid that, Dennis?

Dennis Collins: I guess… You have to think about this differently. You have to reframe it. And that’s what I did, I reframed it. So now, I learn: ask and get the full story first. Number two, name the skill that’s missing. What is missing? And then number three, and the most important part, give the job to one owner with one date, one finish line. Define what ‘good’ looks like. I didn’t do that. I… Guess what, guys? I never had a manager in my entire career, that ever told me what good looks like. What does good look like? What does success look like? No one ever told me that. So from that day forward, I said, “You know what? I have to define what finish looks like.” I never told them what finish looks like.

Paul Boomer: So because we promised our listeners, or viewers, the one thing to take away, what is that one thing? Did you just say the one thing?

Dennis Collins: I just said it.

Paul Boomer: Which is what, again?

Dennis Collins: A-T-O. Ask: Find out the whole situation. Talk to everybody involved, you get a 360 of the problem. Teach: the skill. What’s missing? There’s obviously something missing as to why this person didn’t solve the problem already. What is that thing that’s missing? If they’re a bad person, you’ll find that out too. I say they’re probably a good person that didn’t have the right skill training. And third and most important, give it to one Owner. He owns it. He owns the outcome. He has the authority to make the decision. He has a date and a number. And it’s very clear. It’s an agreement. We shake hands. That makes a difference, doesn’t it?

Leah Bumphrey: But you gotta do that over, and over, and over again. So I’m looking forward to people calling us and letting us know how it worked for them.

Dennis Collins: Every day you gotta do it, Leah.

Leah Bumphrey: All right. I’m out of here.

Dennis Collins: You guys are the best. Thank you. See you next time on Connect & Convert.

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