There are people in the company who are the first to notice that something hasn’t been done and the last to leave until it’s finished. When someone falls behind, they take over that person’s share of the work. When someone makes a mistake, they correct it. When the system fails, they don’t ask many questions; instead, they try to prevent the consequences from affecting the client, their colleagues, or the company.
Most often, they just say, “Never mind, I’ll take care of it.”
At first, this behavior looks like responsibility. The company sees them as reliable, their colleagues trust them, and management believes it has found the people who can carry the company through even the toughest times. However, what begins as a personal virtue can quickly become a systemic weakness.
When the best people spend long enough covering for others’ mistakes, the irresponsible ones start counting on them. They no longer need to track every deadline, because they know someone will finish the task. They don’t have to think about the consequences of their mistakes, because someone else will mitigate them. Management, on the other hand, sees only the final outcome and concludes that the organization is functioning.
But it isn’t.
It is carried on the backs of a few conscientious people who, every day, make up for what the system didn’t have the courage to fix. Their responsibility, then, no longer serves just the business. It becomes a shield for the irresponsible and an alibi for management that doesn’t want to see where the problem really lies.
As a result, the best employees end up with even more work, more obligations, and more problems. Not because it’s fair, but because they can handle it. Their competence becomes a punishment, and their dedication a reason to burden them with tasks that should never have been theirs to begin with.
The company calls them irreplaceable while slowly wearing them down as if they were disposable.
Then one day they stop shouldering the weight. They no longer stay late. They no longer fix someone else’s mistake. They no longer say that familiar phrase: “Let me handle it.”
Then it usually seems as though they have changed, that they are no longer dedicated, and that they are not the person they once were. However, they haven’t changed. They have simply realized that their responsibility must not indefinitely serve as a reward for someone else’s irresponsibility.
A healthy company does not survive on the backs of people who are always bailing it out. It builds a system where everyone accepts the consequences of their own decisions and the responsibility that goes with them.
Anything else is not teamwork.
It’s exploitation of the best under the guise of trust.
From the manuscript of the book “You Do Not Run a Company. You Run Consequences.”
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