Suck it up and take the blame!

As a project manager, rarely does everything go your way. Mistakes by the team happen and they are often seen from outside by supervisors and clients.

When I was younger, and on the south side of wisdom, I would get upset when mistakes were made and things didn’t go my way. I rarely got angry with a person. At least I was that wise. However; I would show my displeasure with the outcome or the product. My team members learned to sense when things were not going well. They were certain that when things were not going well that the focus would be on fixing the problem not casting blame or doling out punishments or worse yet corporate purge.

When things went wrong, I would suck it up, take the blame, and move on. When I reported problems to clients, I always had recovery or mitigation plans ready. After awhile my clients and bosses rarely asked for the details of the plan, they knew that the fix was was already in the works. I found, that every time I took the blame, my stature in the eyes of my client and/or my boss went up. They knew I was a stand up guy, and wouldn't waste effort on things not related to the project moving forward.

Hey, I wasn’t averse to providing career guidance and or an opportunity for an individual to excel with our competitors, but I felt that retaining the new knowledge gained by the error often outweighed the cost of the error. One approach that served me well in “fixing” problem employees was to recognize that there were no “bad employees”, just mistakes in hiring, training, assignment or supervision, and those mistakes always led back to me.

Once I discovered that there were no “bad employees’, I learned to reassign work towards the individuals strength. They could regain team trust by performing at a high level in their skill mastery area. They would get back on the horse that threw them, so to speak. Sometimes, as an added benefit to me,  the individual would get angry and leave; saving me the public humiliation of firing someone who I had hired, trained, or assigned and who I had certainly supervised.

The take away:

• There are no “bad employees”, just hiring, training, assignment or supervision errors.
• Suck it and take the blame, it can raises your status in an organization.

PS. As I recounted in a previous blog. I once had the opportunity to take the blame for others, and was promoted on the spot to a direct report to the CEO of a company with 2000 employees. I was newly hired to fix a project (I spent a decade in project turnarounds). The guilty team members were all assembled, expecting a few executions. The CEO walked in and said “Who’s in charge of this mess/”. I said “I am but I have a plan to fix it.” He looked at me and said: “Good, then you have my support and please let me know directly what you need from the corporation to fix the problem.” and he left the room. It took about one minute for the team to recognize who was now in charge and that I had saved at least some of them from a trip to the pink slip office.

PPS. If your company has public executions of mistake makers. I suggest that they are not a “learning company” and you should seek a new employer.