I was about thirteen when I took our dog, Walker, for a walk in a park near our home in Basel, Switzerland. He stopped at the entrance and did his business in the wrong place.

Out of nowhere, a police officer appeared and started speaking to me in German. I said, in English, that I didn’t speak German. He switched to English. I said, in French, that I spoke neither German nor English. He switched to French.

Almost ready to give up, one last idea came to mind.

“Sir, I only speak Portuguese. I have no idea what you are saying.”
He looked at me and replied, in perfect Portuguese: “No problem at all. Your dog used a prohibited area. The fine is 100 Swiss francs.”

I tried to delegate the problem to the language barrier. He refused the delegation three times. In the end, the responsibility came back to me, in Portuguese, with no way out.

I have carried this story ever since because it illustrates something I see repeatedly in corporate language programs.

HR brings in a vendor to delegate execution, which is correct and necessary. But delegating responsibility for results is another matter entirely. The focus should be on diagnosistics, success criteria and measurable goals. On defining what the language needs to do in real communication contexts. Evaluating methodologies, tracking absences and managing teachers is the school’s job, not the manager’s.

And when results don’t materialize, no one knows whose responsibility it is. The vendor delivered the hours. The employee showed up. The manager signed off. Everyone did their part. But no one asked or measured whether anyone learned anything useful.

The Swiss police officer did not accept my attempt to escape behind a language barrier. Corporate reality doesn’t accept it either.

The question is not whether the program was delivered. It is whether it solved the problem it was supposed to solve.