We usually rely on those responsible for organizational efforts to report the status of those efforts. Whether the reports are special or routine, the potential for conflict of interest is clear: the reporter-manager has incentives to report or emphasize good news, and incentives to withhold or soften bad news.

Ice on the launch pad on January 28, 1986, the day of the last Challenger Launch (STS-51-L). The unusually cold weather was well beyond the tolerances for which the rubber seals of the solid rocket boosters were approved, and it most likely caused the O-ring failure. In meetings on the night before the launch, Morton Thiokol engineers and engineering managers confronted the problem. One of the candidate solutions was to recommend that the launch be scrubbed. Another was to recommend launch despite the weather. Lower level engineers and their managers could not come to an agreement, and in the end, in an example of "covering conflict," the lower level engineers were overruled. See Howard S. Schwartz, Narcissistic Process and Corporate Decay, New York University Press, 1992. (Order from Amazon.com) Photo by Michael Hahn, courtesy U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The difficulties directly created by this conflict of interest are compounded by time skews between the choices and consequences for the reporter-managers. The incentives and disincentives relative to reporting tend to arrive very soon, even when the successes and failures arrive much later. This increases the temptation to shade reports, because the reporter-managers can convince themselves that the problems will be solved over time. Sadly, things often get worse, because the forces that created the problems usually remain in place.
Inaccurate reporting isn't always the result of malice. Here are some of the sources of conflict of interest in reporting.
- Distributed control
- Most of those we hold responsible for organizational efforts aren't actually in control of those efforts. Typically, they're managers, and the people who do the actual work also affect the outcome. Those who do the actual work might or might not be subordinate to the reporter-manager. When they aren't, the reporter-manager's influence on them might be diminished.
- Covering conflict
- It's common to interpret conflict between team members, or between the reporter-manager and team members, as a leadership failure by the reporter-manager. When the reporter-manager cannot convince a team to take a position favored by higher authority, there is a temptation to make a so-called executive decision, overruling the team, and report upward that all is well.
- External commitments
- The people who do the actual work might have external obligations of unscheduled nature. Family situations arise, or mandated training occurs, or other competitive activities appear. When the cause of a delay is beyond the control of the reporter-manager, acknowledging the situation entails acknowledging limits to one's power. Reporter-managers therefore have an incentive to conceal or under-report such delays.
- The unknown
- When the Most of those we hold
responsible for organizational
efforts aren't actually in
control of those effortsunknown nature of the task suddenly creates problems, the reporter-manager has an incentive not to report them, because to do so is to acknowledge an imperfect ability to predict the unknown. - The role of champion
- Special problems arise when the reporter-manager or the report recipient is the champion of the effort. Bad news can reflect not only on the management and leadership skills of the reporter-manager, but also on the validity of the idea itself. Bad news can threaten the champion's career; good news can create career opportunities. If the recipient of the report is also the supervisor of the reporter-manager, this effect is intensified by the career ambitions of the reporter-manager.
A "dual-key" approach — multiple parallel reporting roles — can help. When reporters know that Truth is readily available through other parallel channels, they're more likely to deliver Truth themselves. Top
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
Top Ten Signs of a Blaming Culture
- The quality of an organization's culture is the key to high performance. An organization with a blaming
culture can't perform at a high level, because its people can't take reasonable risks. How can you tell
whether you work in a blaming culture?
What You See Isn't Always What You Get
- We all engage in interpreting the behavior of others, usually without thinking much about it. Whenever
you notice yourself having a strong reaction to someone's behavior, consider the possibility that your
interpretation has outrun what you actually know.
The End-to-End Cost of Meetings: III
- Many complain about attending meetings. Certainly meetings can be maddening affairs, and they also cost
way more than most of us appreciate. Understanding how much we spend on meetings might help us get control
of them. Here's Part III of a survey of some less-appreciated costs.
Answering Questions You Can't Answer
- When someone asks an unanswerable question, many of us respond by asking for clarification. That path
can lead to trouble. Responding to a question with a question can seem defensive, or worse. How can
you answer a question you can't answer?
More Things I've Learned Along the Way: VI
- When I gain an important insight, or when I learn a lesson, I make a note. Example: If you're interested
in changing how a social construct operates, knowing how it came to be the way it is can be much less
useful than knowing what keeps it the way it is.
See also Workplace Politics and Managing Your Boss for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming October 4: Self-Importance and Conversational Narcissism at Work: I
- Conversational narcissism is a set of behaviors that participants use to focus the exchange on their own self-interest rather than the shared objective. This post emphasizes the role of these behaviors in advancing a narcissist's sense of self-importance. Available here and by RSS on October 4.
And on October 11: Self-Importance and Conversational Narcissism at Work: II
- Self-importance is one of four major themes of conversational narcissism. Knowing how to recognize the patterns of conversational narcissism is a fundamental skill needed for controlling it. Here are eight examples that emphasize self-importance. Available here and by RSS on October 11.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group