Throwing People Under the Bus

Rami and Kimberly advice is spot on.

In short, you always want to protect your team as they are the ones doing the heavy lifting. Remember: You are the firewall to all the commotion that may be going on behind the scenes.

Calling out people by name is good if recognition is to be given. But individual problems need to be worked out behind the scenes. Making it 'public' can imply 'me vs. them' and can communicate weakness in you being an effective leader.

There are two faces to leadership-the private and the public.

In this situation, as others have pointed out, that the best public face is to say the timeline is delayed, here is the new timeline and how do we achieve it. People should be called out for positive reasons.

The private face is one where, as the leader, you pull that person aside and ask what's going on. How can you help? What resources do they need to be more successful going forward? You are going through a one on one root cause analysis with that person. That person will appreciate it more and will more than likely hit their target next time around.

Hi Rami,
Agreed completely

One good piece of advice that I received from my manager was - "All failure belongs to you and all success to your team". In a situation like this as well, at the end of the day accountability lies with the PM to prevent a repeat of the incident. It is all about putting together the pieces in a way that you and your team come out stronger from the whole experience.

I agree with Rami and Kimberly.

Accountability is different to blame. As the PM, we are the protection of the teams on our projects and whilst an individual team member could "cause" a problem, it is not our role to use them as an excuse and blame. Be the strong PM, communicate and action the follow up to resolve the issue.

Hi Erikka,

You learned the management practice that we all learned. Unfortunately it's everywhere.

It's called train-wreck management.

It contemplates one only way to fix problems: find the culprit and beat them hard.

In the years 1950s Edward Deming discovered that this way to manage is counter-productive and inadequate to deal with growing complexity.

He identified four cornerstones of a new way to organize work that is much more productive and that actually improves quality and performance.

It's his System of Profound Knowledge.

One of the cornerstones is System Thinking, the idea that it's a system that produces results and makes mistakes, not individuals.

The system has to be analysed and understood.

The train-wreck management habit of finding the culprit prevents understanding and is ineffective in reducing mistakes.

It will more likely reduce motivation and, with it, productivity, quality and ability to solve problems.

Train-wreck management is, unfortunately, irrational. It means that it doesn't learn from experience. It can't correct its own problems. It has to be completely abandoned.

A form of System Thinking has to replace it.

This makes great sense. Thank you so much. Very valuable.