At lot can happen between 7:30 and 10:30 am… This morning I earned the Cock-up of the year award (or very close to it).

This week I had 3 different training events on with one company but 3 different business units. I left the Far East this morning on route to one of these events in Sunninghill which was on route to another one in Lichtenburg. I almost arrived in Sunninghill and I discovered that there may be a bit of a problem…

The trainer sms’d me to see if I had the venue mixed up because the location I had sent her to was not expecting her. So I contacted the client to confirm the venue and she said, ‘yes, it is in Sunninghill, but tomorrow.’ On Monday, one got postponed and I mixed up the day and event and cancelled the trainer for the wrong day.

Now I have one of our trainers all set up and ready to go, and no participants!!! (for those of you who know Tracy – she has put countless hours into preparing for this session).

So I sit in the parking lot, take a deep breath and walk into the training venue with my tail between my legs to tell Tracy that she is not actually training today (after all that time on preparing and having the training room all set up and ready to go!). After I explained my screw up, she took it like a champ and told me that she was feeling very privileged to be a part of the biggest cock up of my year and a half with Avo.

This would not be as big of a deal if Tracy could do the training tomorrow, but she is booked to do another client session tomorrow and there is no one else that I can put in to do the training because it is a custom project that she has been immersed in for over 6 months.

At this point I have visions of me prepping into the wee hours of the morning and getting up at 4am tomorrow to drive back to Joburg from Lichtenburg so I can run the session myself. But after a couple of hours of her cell phone attached to her ear, Vanessa, (our Training Manager) has re-organised heaven and earth and made a plan!

So as a result I am able to trade in my prep time to shower love and gratitude on all the Avos (Tracy, Grant, Vanessa, Raelene and Clint) that pitched in to help or had to rearrange their lives to help me (and most importantly my client!), recover from my cock up.
P.S. There is more to this story, it is only 9:45. Part II to come tomorrow – I will get my butt kicked if my blog is too long…