Why You Want to Hear About More Problems

“In a 2017 Harvard Business Review study, Are You Solving the Right Problems?, 85 percent of 106 C-Suite executives agreed their organizations were bad at diagnosing problems, with 87 percent of them believing this flaw carried significant costs.”

Evette Cordy
Innovation specialist, registered psychologist 
and chief investigator and co-founder at Agents of Spring

These findings suggest it could prove highly beneficial to have additional eyes and minds on potential problems and a sincere invitation and encouragement to those people to bring issues to top-level leadership, where they will be welcomed, listened to, trusted and supported.

Observations and news stories reveal that organizations don't always appear to care as much as they should about learning of developing or raging problems. The news and case studies show that governance practices don’t always reliably seem to catch dangers and risks early either, creating significant consequences to leaders and their people, organizations and other stakeholders.

At times, people can insist nothing is amiss. This reveals they are either overconfident or don’t want to deal with either the message or the messenger. There is a bit of wisdom decision makers don’t realize in this important moment. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” as Carl Sagan was known for saying. And he was correct. 

Not everyone is trustworthy yet when people approach with concerns and warnings they should not be discounted or dismissed because the message is unwanted or the messenger is unvalued.

“Every time you confront something painful, you are at a potentially important juncture in your life—you have the opportunity to choose healthy and painful truth or unhealthy but comfortable delusion.”                                        

Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates founder

Delusion can be comfortable, as Dalio said, and that makes it attractive yet dangerous. Choosing delusion is a thinking error and has to be rejected, consistently, as a measure of intelligence, wisdom and risk management.

Regrettably, the unspoken message heard by employees when they or their message, or both are not received professionally and with acceptance is, "Don't bring me bad news. I, and we, don’t want to hear it." This act can be a form of unhelpful stress management as much as annoyance. It’s also possibly escalating risk to the point where it can be reckless. In other words, this practice is short-sighted, risky and usually, costly.

This is problematic because blind spots become magnified. Ignorance and denial are not as protective as we expect or hope. Developing problems and the risk accompanying them don’t disappear. Probability increases that we as leaders and organizations are more apt to get surprised and hurt, collectively and personally, as are those around us could.

“What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” 

Warren Buffet, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway 

One key objective is to work diligently on being more humble and less overconfident and arrogant. Most people who struggle with those traits have no idea they are acting in such a manner and won’t take it well if they are asked if they are possibly being so in the moment.

Ego and anger are common. Of course, this blocks critically-important information, learning and the benefits of both.

"The more you think you know, the more closed-minded you'll be."

Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates founder 

That simply is beneficial to learn and understand. 

There is a better belief system and response to pursue and develop. What is wiser, more effective and protective is conquering emotions of annoyance, impatience, fear and anxiety through healthy and skilled stress management.

This can be in the form of deep breathing exercises to self-soothe oneself, using a positive mantra to center one’s mind, relaxing one’s body, visualizing smart decisions from the past and choosing to exercise forward thinking to avoid errors of commission or omission, and implement risk management promptly. 

The best form of risk management is proactive, yet early reactive management of potential trouble or problems that have escalated is next best. Mitigate early.

Reframing one’s mind to valuing being in the “know” is smart. Learning of early warnings is a gift, no matter who brings them to you. Choose this over the comfort of ignorance or denial.

There is a significant advantage of early discovery and having agency with less risk to think about to address root problems more intelligently and successfully.

Thus it’s really foolish and dangerous to carry the attitude of “Don’t bring me bad news” and then communicate it verbally, in print or with facial expressions, red tape or a reaction that leads people to believe you don’t care or will retaliate if they pursue it further.

Think: dispute prevention, prevention of scandal, crisis and possible litigation. 

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability
to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable
for their apparent disinclination to do so.”

Douglas Adams, author

It might be helpful to realize that we have more responsibility than we might know when we are choosing to remain ignorant in place of being best informed and acting more wisely..

“We are responsible not only for what we do
but also for what we could have prevented.”

Peter Singer
moral philosopher, ethics specialist and professor at Princeton

This might seem top of mind right now yet in the moment where unwanted information is available and either not sought out or rejected, is this being remembered, that we are responsible for what we can prevent? History says ‘no.’

Finally, ego suppression is a skill. Everyone will have to face ego in some area of their life. To master ‘humility > ego’ takes work, discipline, perseverance and consistency. Otherwise, failing is likely. Once humility becomes that trustworthy skill, it’s more likely to achieve a higher level of wisdom.

“An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in their understanding of things.”

Bryant H. McGill, author and social entrepreneur 

Be courteously open-minded to hearing about the problems brought to you. Being more informed, well informed, is a gift we won’t always receive in life.