We’ve Been Saying This for Years

We have just finished presenting the findings of a delivery system assessment.

For several weeks, we have been establishing the real condition of a large, complex program that has gone badly off the rails. We have spoken to the people doing the work, tested the plan against reality and examined why the delivery system is no longer holding together.

We sit down with the senior management team and explain where the program really stands and what must change if it is to be recovered.

Soon afterwards, one or two senior people from the delivery organisation pull us aside and quietly say:

“We agree with everything you said. We’ve been saying this for years, but nobody listens.”

This happens after virtually every delivery system assessment we undertake on a major program.

Different organisation. Different program. Often a different industry. But the private conversation is remarkably consistent. Senior executives tell us that the weaknesses we have identified are already well known inside the business – and have often been known for years.

That is what makes the remark so troubling.

It sounds like vindication.

It is also an admission of passive complicity.

They are rarely saying that they have been warning about this particular program for years. Often, it has not existed for that long. They mean that the weaknesses we have identified are familiar features of the organisation.

They have seen the same problems recur across different programs, customers and business units. They have raised them with senior management and watched the organisation repeatedly choose not to address them.

These are not junior people without access or influence. They are experienced, highly paid executives occupying senior positions in the delivery organisation. They understand what is wrong and can see the threat it poses to a business-critical program.

They are not powerless observers. They occupy positions in which they should know better – and should be expected to do more than quietly agree after somebody from outside has finally said that the emperor has no clothes.

Yet once they have warned a director and the director has refused to act, many appear to believe that their responsibility has ended.

They delivered the warning. Their boss made the decision. They kept their heads below the parapet and got on with the job.

That is not simply a failure of process.

It is a cultural failure.

In a healthy organisation, raising a serious concern is not the end of an executive’s responsibility. If the issue threatens a business-critical commitment, it must remain alive until it is addressed, explicitly accepted by someone with the authority to accept the consequences, or escalated further.

I have sometimes asked people directly:

“Why are you still here? How can you continue working under these conditions without escalating the issue?”

The answers are blunt and understandable.

• “He is my boss.”
• “It could damage my career.”
• “I may be pushed aside.”
• “I could lose my job.”

Those fears may be entirely justified. But they also reveal the less attractive side of management culture.

When experienced executives believe that telling the truth about a failing program could cost them their position, silence has not occurred by accident. It has been produced by the organisation.

Perhaps through pressure. Perhaps through intimidation. Perhaps through bullying behaviour. More often, through the accumulated knowledge that unwelcome truths are punished while reassuring stories are rewarded.

Understandable fear, however, does not make silence neutral.

Nor, ultimately, does it protect the individual.

By remaining in place and continuing to support a position they know is unsustainable, senior executives are often shooting themselves in the foot.

They may believe that keeping their heads down will protect their careers. In reality, they are allowing their professional reputations to become attached to decisions, forecasts and assurances they do not believe.

Private disagreement offers little protection when the program finally fails. The customer, the board and the wider organisation do not see the warnings delivered behind closed doors.

They see the executives who attended the reviews, supported the reporting and remained part of the leadership team while the position deteriorated.

The longer they tolerate it, the harder it becomes to claim that they were merely observers.

They may not have created the problem, but when they allow serious concerns to disappear because a director finds them inconvenient, they help preserve the conditions in which the problem can grow.

Most organisations can conceal those conditions during routine work.

Capable managers compensate for weaknesses in the system. Decisions are forced through personal relationships. Functions find ways around one another. The organisation muddles through and mistakes survival for competence.

A business-critical program removes that protection.

The individual activities may look familiar, but their scale and dependency load have pushed the undertaking beyond the point at which the normal functional organisation can reliably control it.

The program has crossed the execution threshold, while leadership continues to treat it as a larger version of everyday work.

Weaknesses tolerated for years now become load-bearing. Unclear ownership, unavailable resources, slow decisions and weak control of dependencies are no longer irritating features of the culture. They begin to determine whether the program succeeds or fails.

As the position deteriorates, the monthly executive review can become part of the pretence.

One version of the program is discussed privately. Another appears in the formal reporting.

Structural problems become manageable “challenges.” Failed assumptions become actions in progress. Activity is presented as evidence of momentum, even when the required outcomes are not being delivered.

The review is no longer asking what is true.

It is asking what can safely be said without contradicting the commitment.

Eventually, reality catches up with the story.

The customer sees milestones moving and forecasts repeatedly failing. Confidence drains from the relationship. Scrutiny hardens into hostility and, in the most serious cases, litigation is threatened.

An external recovery team is brought in and describes weaknesses that senior people inside the organisation already recognise.

Then comes the private approach once again:

“We’ve been saying this for years.”

But if you have known for years, the question is not whether you were right.

It is what you did about it.

This is not an argument that executives should resign whenever their advice is rejected. Nor is it a call for reckless confrontation.

But seniority must mean more than recognising a serious problem, mentioning it once or twice and then protecting yourself from the consequences.

The larger the program and the more senior the executive, the less credible “nobody listened” becomes as a defence.

There comes a point when keeping your head down is no longer self-preservation.

It is self-defeating.

And it is passive complicity.

That is not merely a failure of process, governance or culture.

It is a failure of leadership and, ultimately, of character.

“We’ve been saying this for years” is not a defence.

It is a confession.

 

About the author

David Hilliard is Founder of Mentor, execution specialists in strategic program execution.