Eighteen months ago, Sandra McKinney was appointed as the manager of the Chicago office of Safety Associates Inc., a consulting company that provides government-mandated safety training programs to small businesses, with a focus on safety training for truck drivers with small trucking companies with twenty or fewer drivers. Depending on the client and the governmental requirement, Safety Associates will either deliver face-to-face training or online training for employees, then filethe appropriate paperwork with OSHA, the Department of Transportation and appropriate insurance companies in order to meet all requirements for the trucking company.

Sandra came on board committed to challenging the process, and she set her sights on a new customer: Schneider National, Inc., one of the largest trucking companies in the US. Schneider employs nearly 12,000 drivers - if Sandra were able to land them as a client, Schneider's account would be six times larger than all of their accounts combined. Sandra assigned her own clients and those of two other sales reps to other employees, re-directed money that had been previously paid for bonuses, travel and other discretionary activities to help fund Safety Associate's pursuit of the Schneider account. After eighteen months of ups and downs, Sandra was still trying to persuade the Training Director for Schneider that Safety Associates was a viable solution for their safety training needs, but that all ended when Sandra was removed as the Chicago manager and demoted/re-assigned as a sales representative at the Anchorage, Alaska office. Her boss explained to her "Eighteen months, Sandra, and you didn't land Schneider. What's worse, you're so focused on trying for that big win, you missed other things - did you know Steve generated five new clients than had 80 additional drivers for training? That one of Bob's clients was so pleased, he sent our CEO a thank you? No, you didn't. Pack your long underwear - it gets cold in Anchorage."

Sandra may have been right to challenge the process, but what was her mistake? Use the terminology of Kouzes and Posner in your answer.(15 points)