Fred is the quality assurance manager of an automotive parts supplier. He just found out that a defective part had been installed on the last 5,000 seats they produced. They shipped 2,000 of these seats, and the remainder are still in the shipping department. The delay in shipping these seats, due to the need to replace the defective part, has caused the plant to be charged a penalty by their customer. The need to send a team to the plants that had already received the defective seats to replace the bad parts has cost the company in time, money and damage to what had been a relationship of trust and confidence.

Fred explains to his boss, the chief operations officer, that they should tell the rest of the departments what happened, why it happened, and what they are doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again, so they can watch for similar circumstances.
 
“Fred, there is no way I am going to tell everyone how we screwed up. We are not going to hang our dirty laundry out in public. We took care of it, it’s in-house, so just keep your mouth shut,” was the COO’s reply.
 
Later that week at the executive staff meeting, when Fred is asked to make his report, he says, “We had a few problems last week; but we corrected them, and now we are OK.”  Afterward the COO says to Fred, “I thought I told you to keep quiet about that. Don’t give the boss any bad news; that’s not what he wants to hear!”
 
How many times have you sat in staff meetings where the rule of thumb is, “Never give the boss any bad news”? I wonder how many problems get solved in those meetings.  
 
It’s human nature to want to hide our mistakes, especially if they make us look bad. However, the greater mistake is to not acknowledge the mistake, thereby allowing others in the organization make the same one.
 
Brogan & Brothers, a marketing agency in Detroit, acknowledges their mistakes and honors those who confess their mistakes to the rest of the staff with the Mistake of the Month. The employee with the biggest mistake actually wins a $50 prize. CEO Marcie Brogan said, “Sharing a mistake is just as valuable as sharing a best practice. Everyone learns from it.” Brogan herself has won the award. She once showed up to make a presentation to a client with a document that was out of date and out of order. “That document was sitting on my lap for two hours in the car. I should have looked at it,” said Brogan. Her lesson learned was, “Never skip a final check before leaving the office.” Mary Zellmer-Bruhn of the Carlson School of Business said the award is a sound investment. “If an employee doesn’t speak up, the risk is that same mistake might be happening elsewhere in the company, and that could be very costly.”
 
Sometimes leaders and managers need to go looking for the problems. When was the last time you actually performed the work of one of your employees? I don’t mean visiting employees on site, but actually doing their jobs for a day or more. Time in the field offers more than mere understanding, it offers better business practices. Kathryn Clubb, a former senior partner at Accenture, had worked at Northwest Airlines earlier in her career. During a strike of ground personnel she had to load and unload baggage for several days. She said this experience helped her to redesign the baggage handling process to ease the load on the employees and speed up the process. Now that’s managing by walking around!
 
Former Chief of Staff of the U. S. Army Gordon Sullivan, in his book Hope is Not a Method, discusses the Three Questions that all leaders should ask themselves and their organizations on a regular basis. They are:
•    What’s happening?  What’s happening that should be happening and we want to continue to happen? What’s happening that should not be happening and what is the impact if it continues to happen?
•    What’s not happening?  What’s not happening that should be happening?  Why isn’t it happening? What is the impact if it continues not to happen?
•    What can I do to influence the action?  What can I, as a leader, or us, as an organization, do to make sure the things that we want to  continue will, in fact, continue?  What can we do to stop the things that should not be happening?
These three questions won’t hide the bad news, and will focus on improving our performance.
 
Management consultant Peter Drucker in an interview for Inc. magazine, said that the greatest source of mistakes of senior leaders in any organization is asking the wrong questions. In my work as a project manager I never ask, “Are we on schedule? Are there any problems?” The questions that need to be asked are questions such as, “What tasks are currently behind schedule or look like they are going to fall behind schedule? What budget problems will we encounter over the next two weeks? What problems have occurred and what did we do about them?” All of these questions require more than a yes or no answer, and will generate bad-news responses. Staff meetings and in-progress review meetings are not the time for a “feel good” session.  
 
The only reason we have such meetings is to bring problems to the surface and resolve them. So ask the right questions that will give you the “bad news” answers!

		Bob Wangen is the president of Great Lakes Training & Consulting in DeWitt.  He is a project manager and a Certified Quality Manager.  Great Lakes Training & Consulting helps businesses to improve their performance through employee and leadership development and business process improvement.