Almost nobody hides bad news on a project because they’re dishonest. They hide it because they’re hopeful, and hope is a legitimate professional emotion right up until it starts eating your contingency.
Understanding that changes how you deal with it, because you stop looking for bad actors and start looking at the incentives.
The optimism trap
The internal logic goes like this. If I fix it before anyone notices, nothing bad happens. If I raise it now, I look like I’ve failed at something I might still solve. So you wait one more week. Then you wait one more.
Every week you wait, the cost of telling goes up, which makes waiting more attractive. That’s the trap, and it’s why so much bad news arrives too late to be useful.
What early actually buys
Options. That’s the whole thing.
A slip flagged in week one can be absorbed with sequencing, resourcing, or a conversation with the client about priority. The same slip flagged in week seven can only be absorbed by somebody else’s budget or somebody else’s weekend.
You’re not asking people to accept bad news. You’re giving them the ability to do something about it while doing something is still cheap.
What late actually costs
One difficult conversation becomes a permanent reading habit. Every update you send afterwards gets read for what you might be leaving out.
Client relationships get lost over three day delays that were sat on for a fortnight. The delay is nothing. The fortnight is everything.
Build the permission
If your team only tells you problems late, that’s usually about you rather than them.
Watch what happens the next time somebody brings you something early. If your first reaction is frustration, they’ve learned. If your first reaction is to ask what they need, they’ve learned something more useful.
There’s a direct question worth asking your team. What’s the thing you’re hoping will fix itself before you have to mention it? It’s slightly uncomfortable and it surfaces things you’d otherwise hear about in six weeks.
Say what you don’t know
Early news is incomplete news. That’s fine and you should say so.
“We’ve got a problem with the switchboard delivery. I don’t yet know the impact on the program. I’ll have an assessment by Thursday.” Nobody sensible objects to that. They object to finding out on Thursday that you knew on Monday.
Worth sitting with
What’s the thing on your project right now that you’re quietly hoping will resolve itself before anyone asks?
Whatever came to mind, that’s the one to raise this week.
Part of a series on project messaging, which starts with knowing what the message actually is. Related: silence gets filled.
Ben Webb is an Australian project delivery leader, AIPM Project Manager of the Year 2022 and an IPMA World Project Manager of the Year nominee 2023. He writes about project delivery, leadership and the difference between managing a project and actually delivering one.
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