And in some absolutely bizarre anti-logic, I’ve seen some decide that the person trying to warn is somehow responsible for the inevitable outcome.

Not enough of you believed and now this balloon is adrift and will never make it to Imaginationland.

> I’ve seen some decide that the person trying to warn is somehow responsible for the inevitable outcome.

All. the. time...

Pervasive cognitive glitch: inability to distinguish between _problems_ and _people_.

Identifying the problem ==> causing the problem.

I got tasked with essentially project managing a doomed project that the boss had already made all the tech decisions & promises on. Nothing was built but we had customers with firm dates for go-live. It was clearly not going to work, and not be on time. I pointed some of this out.

He then asked me to do weekly RAG status for stakeholders. So I did and it all slowly turned red with no easy remediation.

He did two things that made me realize it was time to go:

First, when I suggested that "if I report red status all year and then it doesn't complete on time, but I kept everyone well informed - am I going to be rewarded end of year".. to which I got nervous laughter response.

Second, he started talking about "what if we change the definition of done", such that we just start marking things amber/green because like.. well some of it is running in QA or hey its like 70% done, so why not mark it done?

Just seemed like he handed me the keys to a sinking boat as he stepped off in the last life boat.

It's simpler than this. You made them look stupid, so they want to get rid of you. Blaming you for the current mess is a start.

It's step 2 of the "3 envelopes" method of management.

> I’ve seen some decide that the person trying to warn is somehow responsible for the inevitable outcome.

You should have warned me about this more convincingly!

I worked for a guy whose boss was trying to throw him under the bus constantly. In one scenario after being reminded of something, he said "I don't recall that conversation, you need to put this kind of stuff into email". So in a following scenario where he did send an email, boss man said "I get lots of email, you can't send an email and assume I read it."

This is why I find if you don't already have good relations with management and trust each others judgement, it really doesn't matter.

They will do as they wish, and throw you under the bus as needed.

Talk verbally, and then send an email afterwards with notes. This means that they definitely were informed, because you talked to them, and you have something to point them to if they don't remember, because you send notes.

This is protection in adversarial scenarios, but is also just a great habit In general. Verbal discussion is really good for getting people on the same page, but without notes it's very easy for details and decisions to get lost.

Yes, but..

If you are in the kind of adversarial management relationship where this is necessary, you have already lost.

Do you think this kind of guy, when you point to "hey remember the conversation, here's the follow-up mail with the meeting notes" he's gonna be like "oh yeah, I was wrong, you are right." ?

It's good to have meeting agendas and follow up minutes, I just rarely find that they are going to help you litigate anything. More to remind you how a decision came to be.

Another good way is to take notes live in the meeting — and have the doc shared on screen (for remote) or projected on the wall (for in-person).

That way, it's unavoidably in front of everyone's face, and you get the perk of ironclad timestamps in the document-editing history.

I got "You should have been more persuasive!" too once. Hell of a thing to say to someone who you know is ND.

That's actually the perfect ironclad management logic BS, lol.

You are wrong because you were right but unable to persuade me. Not "hmm, maybe I should be more receptive to my reports feedback".

Schrödinger's logic. If only they'd kept their mouths shut.