A coHonestly, it seems like every other day somebody is declaring a win.
A new energy deal. A new leadership team. A new shareholders’ agreement. A new CEO.
And apparently, we love Delcy.
Now, I have nothing against love.
But I do have a thing about memory.
Because increasingly, I find myself listening to what we are being told today and wondering what really happened yesterday.
Not because people can’t change.
Not because circumstances don’t.
And certainly not because a better outcome shouldn’t be welcomed.
But yesterday’s reality doesn’t cease to exist because today’s is more convenient.
A CEO is appointed…a win
A few weeks later, the CEO is gone and the vacancy is back.
The latest announcement may be perfectly accurate.
But surely we’re allowed to remember the story which preceded it.
And that is what has been bothering me about some of the wins being declared recently.
We are invited to celebrate the latest result—the win—and expected to evaluate it from that point.
Except too frequently—
the details of what came before are conveniently omitted.
Let me give you a simple illustration of what I am seeing.
If I told you I had upgraded my vehicle from a PDF to a PEL—an older series to a newer one, supposedly an upgrade—you might reasonably assume there were grounds for congratulations.
Until you discovered that the PDF was a top-class Volvo XC90 and the PEL a modest used B15.
Now add one more detail: I inherited the Volvo, progressively ran it into the ground, eventually lost it and spent some time without a car before acquiring the B15.
From no car to a B15?
Progress…right!
From Volvo to B15?
Suddenly…not so much.
Now we see why the whole journey matters.
Because where I choose to begin the story can completely change what the result appears to mean. What seems like a win might be revealed for what it really is.
And that is where Truth becomes inconvenient.
What did we have before? What happened to it? What choices contributed to where we eventually found ourselves? What have we recovered? What did that recovery cost? And what do we actually have now?
These are not questions designed to deny progress.
Sometimes recovery really is progress. If we have moved from a difficult position to a better one, there may be good reason to celebrate.
But you cannot move me from solid ground, dig me into a pit, and then ask me to judge your success only by how far you have pulled me back out.
It is not like I don’t remember where we were standing before you started digging. And that matters. Because recovery should not automatically be confused with advancement.
Neither should a new arrangement automatically be assumed to be better simply because it is new.
Nor should the latest result be allowed to erase the choices which helped create the conditions from which we are now recovering.
There is another question too.
The B15 may be a perfectly serviceable car. It gets me moving again. But it does not have the capacity of the Volvo.
So even after acknowledging the progress, I still need to ask:
Is what I have now still capable of taking me where I say I want to go? Is it really a win?
That matters in our personal lives, in organisations and in leadership.
In fact, it matters anywhere people are being asked to accept a result as a win without looking too closely at the journey that produced it—or what a win was supposed to look like in the first place.
In Be the Person You Dream of Becoming, I wrote:
“The practical work of Results is not only to celebrate what has been achieved, but to interpret what it reveals.”
I find myself seeing more and more in that principle today. Because a result does not only tell me where I am.
Properly examined, it can tell me where I started, what happened along the way, what my choices produced, what I lost, what I recovered, what I learned—and whether I have become more capable of creating what comes next.
Otherwise, I can recover from the consequences of my choices without learning enough to make different ones.
Which makes it difficult even to trust what you might do with the next Volvo.
So yes, declare the win. Celebrate genuine progress. Welcome better relationships. Welcome better arrangements. Welcome better results.
Just don’t start the story where it becomes convenient.
Or assume I don’t remember yesterday.
If what we have today is genuinely better, yesterday should help us see that— not have to disappear for us to believe it.
Reflect & Apply
1️⃣ Where might you be claiming progress from a strategically convenient low point while ignoring how your own choices helped to create it?
2️⃣Before declaring the win, have you accounted honestly for what was lost, the choices which contributed to the loss, and who was responsible for those choices?
3️⃣After the recovery, are you actually better positioned to achieve the outcome you originally intended—or simply better off than the problem you helped to create?
📘 In Be the Person You Dream of Becoming, I explore how the Results we create can become feedback for greater clarity, learning and more conscious choices about what comes next. My book is available on Amazon, in RIK Bookstores nationwide, or directly through me.
It takes a lifetime of Becoming to live a life.
Discerningly,
Monica Rogers-Fletcher
Listen to WHERE THE STORY STARTS MATTERS