No Need to Get Defensive

When leaders stop hearing bad news, problems don’t disappear—they multiply.

“Who said that?” That is what a visibly angry IT leader named Jim wanted to know. I knew I had hit a nerve - and was not surprised. There were twenty of us in a large conference room. We had been hired to redesign a key process, and the meeting had been set up to review what we had learned from interviewing and job shadowing a cross-section of employees. The interviews had revealed a long list of problems, and many of them were technology related. So it was no wonder Jim was on edge - he felt put on the spot.

Pain Point Number Seven

It as the seventh item on the list of that had ignited Jim’s anger - and it was a good one. The company was using separate systems for planning campaigns and billing the client for those campaigns, and these two systems had to be kept in synch. There was a plan to replace both systems with a single integrated solution, but that solution was still years away. Spending money on an interface that would soon go away had been judged as unnecessary, so the IT team had settled for a quick fix. They had created a report for the planners that highlighted what had changed in the planning system, so the planners knew what needed updating in the billing system.

That would probably have been okay for the time being, if it had worked. But it didn’t. The system would flag some items that had not changed, and not flag others that actually had changed. That meant that every planner week after week spent hours going through massive spreadsheets. A truly mind-numbing task, consuming thousands of hours each month across the army of planners. No wonder the planners had raised the issue when we asked them to tells us what was getting in the way of being productive. That’s what I had just explained to the entire team - and what had set Jim off. He did not even wait for an answer to his question, before he yelled: “We fixed that months ago. We fixed it top down. I want to know who told you that?”

Of course, it would have been a terrible idea to tell him who raised the issue - unless the goal was to discourage people from pointing out what was not working.

I did not have the heart to tell him that I had seen the problem with my own eyes, so I tried the diplomatic route instead: “I don’t think I should tell you who said it because that is irrelevant. It seems there are only two options: One is that the fix did not solve the problem - and nobody bothered to check whether it did. Two is that the fix solved the issue - but nobody told the users. We should probably dig into this a bit more to see which one it is, but either way, the outcome is the same - these planners are spending thousand of hours each year to check everything.”

It was clear that Jim did not like the response, but I could also see that the gears in his head were turning.

Blue Sky everywhere

I could understand his frustration. He had probably been told the issue was fixed…and nobody had bothered to check. The higher up you are in the food chain, the less you know about what really happens. As my friend Steve Crom once put it: “At 30,000 feet above the ground, the sky is always blue”. A Harvard Business Review article described this phenomenon as the ‘iceberg of ignorance’: while operators see 100% of the problems, but middle managers are only aware of 10% of the problems, and senior executives see even less.

Embracing Bad News

Nobody likes bad news, especially executives. But when they see problems as opportunities to get better, amazing things can happen.

When Alan Mulally took over Ford, the company was on track to lose $17 billion - and all the charts were green. Ford at the same had a culture where it was not okay to bring up problems. Here is a short clip where Alan explains what happened next to a group of Stanford students.

Alan’s story shows what can happen if leaders embrace problems as opportunities to get everybody into the game.

Converting Problems into Opportunities

The moment with Jim wasn’t really about a broken report. It was about something much more common—and much more dangerous: a gap between what leaders believe is happening and what people on the ground are actually experiencing.

That gap exists in almost every organization. The difference between high-performing organizations and struggling ones is not whether problems exist. It’s how leaders respond when they surface.

If leaders want fewer surprises, fewer fire drills, and better results, a few shifts make all the difference.

1. Make it safe to surface problems

People do not hide issues because they are lazy or political. They hide them because they’ve learned—often the hard way—that raising problems leads to defensiveness, blame, or silence.

Leaders who want the truth need to make it safe to tell it:

- Ask questions without signaling blame

- Thank people for surfacing issues, even when they’re uncomfortable

- Avoid immediately jumping to explanations or defenses

- Separate “Who caused this?” from “What’s actually happening?”

When people believe they won’t get punished for honesty, they stop managing optics and start sharing reality.

2. Go see the work, don’t just review the slides

Dashboards and status decks are useful—but they are abstractions. They are often several layers removed from how work actually gets done.

Some of the most powerful insights come from:

- Sitting with frontline employees as they do the work

- Watching how many steps it really takes to complete a task

- Asking “What makes this harder than it needs to be?”

In this case, taking ten minutes watching a planner reconcile two systems would have revealed more than weeks of reporting.

3. Always Close the loop

One of the fastest ways to kill engagement is to ask for input and then do nothing with it. Even if the answer is “We can’t fix this right now,” say that. Explain why. Let people know they were heard. Silence creates the impression that speaking up is pointless.The real failure in Jim’s story wasn’t the broken fix—it was that nobody ever verified whether the fix worked or told users what had changed.

4. Treat problems as signals, not threats

High-performing organizations treat problems the way good doctors treat symptoms: as signals pointing to something worth understanding.

Every recurring issue is telling you something about:

• Broken handoffs

• Misaligned incentives

• Overcomplicated processes

• Missing ownership

• Technology that no longer fits the work

Ignoring those signals doesn’t make them go away. It just pushes the cost downstream.

5. Model the behavior you want to see

Culture changes when leaders go first.

When leaders admit what they don’t know, ask for help, and show curiosity instead of defensiveness, it gives everyone else permission to do the same. That’s how you move from “green dashboards” to real performance improvement.

The Payoff

Organizations that embrace this mindset see tangible benefits:

• Fewer unpleasant surprises

• Faster problem resolution

• Higher employee engagement

• Decisions based on reality, not assumptions

• Stronger trust between leadership and frontline teams

Most importantly, they stop wasting time pretending everything is fine—and start fixing what actually matters.

A Simple Challenge

The next time someone brings you bad news, resist the instinct to explain or defend. Instead, try this: “That’s helpful to know. Tell me more.”

You might be surprised what you learn—once people realize it’s safe to tell you the truth. And when they do that, seize the opportunity to get everybody involved.