46. Telling the Truth Slowly

Corporate culture pressures people into withholding discomforting information.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton named Mike McCurry as his press secretary. At that time, McCurry was already well known to the members of the press corps. In his first press conference, a reporter asked him, “You won’t lie to us as press secretary now, will you?” McCurry responded,“No, but, I’d tell the truth slowly.”

Project managers and team members sometimes end up telling the truth slowly for reasons such as the following:

• They don’t want to own the problem they announce. Many cultures send out the message that if you’re the one who notices a mess, you get to clean it up:

“Gee, Boss, we could have major performance problems now that we are tripling the number of concurrent users on that old backbone system.”

“You’re right, Smithers. Make sure that doesn’t happen.”

• They don’t have an answer to the follow-up question they know they will get. Stating a problem without an immediate remedy to propose is considered whining, and whiners are career-limited in many organizations.

“Gee, Boss, this project might be late.”

“How late, Smithers?”

“Gee, Boss, I don’t know.”

“Whiner,” Boss mumbles under his breath.

• They are waiting for someone else to reveal a bigger problem that they can hide their own problems behind. This comes from the Someone-Else-Will-Flinch-First School of Career Management.

“I’ve called this meeting of all Team Leads on the project because Smithers here has informed me that his group is at least two months behind schedule. He isn’t exactly sure,” here the Boss sighs,“so, to be safe, I will officially postpone delivery for four months.”

The Team Leads say out loud, “That’s too bad, Smithers. Well, we can always use the extra time for more testing. Smithers, want the new guy in Ralph’s group to help you out?”

That’s what the Team Leads say; what they really mean is

“Smithers broke! We knew he was a wussie and a whiner. We hope these four more months will cover our own unannounced slippages.”

If Smithers can survive long enough, he will learn that telling the truth quickly is the path to martyrdom. He will learn that his organization doesn’t want the immediate truth; it wants happiness for as long as it can have it. He will observe that the truth will eventually tell out, but the organization prefers to “deal with it” when that day comes. Until that day, Smithers, now a team player, will tell the truth s—l—o—w—l—y.

Hiding your problems behind those of others is sometimes called “Schedule Chicken.”