“No Good Deed Goes…”

In the runup to the decisive World War II battle of Midway, there was sharp disagreement between the Hawaii-based U.S. Naval cryptologists, headed by Joseph Rochefort, and the Washington D.C.-based intelligence office about the next target of the Imperial Japanese Fleet. Rochefort was convinced that it would be Midway Island, while Washington was equally certain that it would be elsewhere in the Pacific, including Papua New Guinea. A member of Rochefort’s team came up with an idea: the coded name of the IJN’s next objective was “AF,” but nobody seemed to be able to agree on what “AF” was. Rochefort arranged to have secure message sent to Midway, instructing them to broadcast an uncoded message indicating that their fresh water plant was malfunctioning. Soon afterwards, the Americans intercepted a Japanese transmission indicating that “AF” was short of drinking water. Rochefort was right.
As a result, the commander of the U.S. Fleet sent to intercept the Japanese was provided with what was essentially the entire IJN order of battle, including dates and times. Skillfully positioning his fleet northeast of Midway, Admiral Spruance was able to inflict a massive defeat on the Japanese Navy, even though he was outmanned, out-gunned, with fewer, inferior aircraft and less experienced pilots. Indeed, the only tangible advantage the United States had going into the Battle of Midway was its superior intelligence, and that was a direct result of Joseph Rochefort’s expertise and tenaciousness.
So, was Rochefort recognized and rewarded for his invaluable insight that led to the saving of hundreds of American lives and shortening the war? Well, no. Admiral Ernest King, head of the Navy at the time, personally disliked Rochefort, and refused to consider the attempts by Admiral Chester Nimitz to recognize him.[i] The fact that King was co-located with the very same naval intelligence organization that should have arrived at the correct conclusion well before the Hawaii-based team did, and was embarrassed because of having been out-performed by Rochefort’s team, had something to do with King’s ill-placed animosity[ii]. Rochefort was eventually reassigned to a Floating Dry Dock in San Francisco, and never served at sea again.[iii]
Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…
If you completed the question in this blog’s title with the word “unpunished,” go to the head of the class at GTIM Nation University. It’s been my personal experience that, of what I consider my major career accomplishments, every single one brought with it new enemies, entrenched, vindictive, and permanent. I think that this particular organizational behavior and performance pathology goes well beyond failure to recognize achievement where and when it’s due. I believe it points to a profound departure on the part of the owning organization from a meritocracy, and its arrival into a politically-driven swamp, almost certainly significantly populated by Maccoby archetype Jungle Fighters.
Are you currently in such an organization? This particular pathology has several symptoms, and the one I’ve noticed that turns up in its early stages has to do with the blurring of the lines of distinction when it comes to recognizing success and failure. In one particular instance, I was given a task that was considered extremely difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish, by an overtly hostile upper manager. He also “assigned” one of his favorites, a fellow I’ll call “Bob.” At the start, Bob was a no-show. If things were to get done, I would have to do them. As the deadline loomed, and it started to look like I would actually cover the scope on-time, Bob started hanging around my office more often. Not that he would actually do any of the work – he just wanted to be seen and associated with me at that stage. The day that I was transmitting the deliverable Bob wouldn’t leave my office. I came to realize later that his owning organization had perfected the art of glomming onto success stories that they really hadn’t contributed to, and fleeing failures for which they were, in fact, directly responsible. Sure enough, when the recognition came for having successfully performed the scope on-time, on-budget, the credit went to … Bob.
Other signs include the persistence of ex-parte discussions on contested technical scope, the isolation of any Craftsmen or Gamesmen Maccoby archetypes by the Jungle Fighters, and, of course, the aforementioned misplacement of attribution for success, accompanied by failure to hold poor performers responsible. I believe that this is one of the motives for those who push back against the implementation of the PMO: Earned Value and Critical Path Methodology-based Management Information Systems are brutally effective in reliably identifying the winners and losers of the PM game within the macro-organization, so the poorer managers naturally hate being exposed as such.
So, for all those over-achievers within GTIM Nation (almost certainly a plurality, if not a majority), keep accomplishing, by all means. Just be aware of the dark side of it: the word “unpunished” pops to the mind when reading this blog’s title for a reason.


[i] Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rochefort on September 5, 2026, 21:02 MDT.
[ii] Retrieved from https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history/2026/june/justice-joe-rochefort on September 5, 2026, 21:52 MDT.
[iii] Ibid.