6. It’s Not My Fault

Having geared himself up to tell Tom, his boss, that he had made a terrible mistake in firing the head of IT, Steve realized that he was wasting his time. There was no way his boss was going to accept that it was his own decision that had had such a costly and devastating effect on the organization. Its result was genuine chaos, a walkout of some of the most capable people in the department, and a temporary lockdown of the company’s key operations. Yet Tom persisted in denying that he had made a mistake. Everybody knew there had been problems in the IT department but equally everybody knew that the head of IT wasn’t the person responsible. The problem lay with one of the company’s sub-contractors—a consulting firm that Tom had brought in. But Tom still refused to listen to what Steve had to say and despite the alarming aftermath insisted that he had made the right decision. The head of IT had never been up to the job and he should have fired him much earlier. According to him, Steve was exaggerating when he pointed out that the company had almost gone into the red. In fact, Steve should hold himself responsible for the mess as he’d introduced the head of IT in the first place.