"Sara, it's not your fault.

And it’s also your fault.”

This was one of the harder professional conversations I’ve had. Our intern, Sara (name changed for privacy) was struggling.

We had given her a few tasks, one being to research content ideas and to write ONE article from our newsletter topic list. The second task was where things went wrong.

She wrote took all four topics and wrote full articles for them.

My manager wasn’t happy and confused how this happened. I was leading the newsletter so I had to correct this wrong.

Sara and I walked over to a local coffee shop to discuss this.

I started by letting her know that WE let her down.

• We didn’t give her clear action items from the meeting
• We didn’t check in with her to redirect her after article #1

Her face showed relief. Then it quickly shifted after I said this:

It’s also YOUR fault that this happened.

• You could have verified the deliverables before starting
• You could have asked how much time we wanted her to invest

The organization failed to have systems that would have avoided this. And she failed to understand the assignment and execute on the deliverables.

Let’s bring this back to you:

It’s not your fault that your understanding and ability to do marketing is disconnected with reality.

There are many reasons for this. I want to touch on the main three:

Force #1: Marketing is constantly changing

People and culture are not stagnant.