Part 7 Delivering the Bad News
Part 7 Delivering the Bad News
Bad news come in different forms.
The effect of bad news can be different in different situations. In
professional life, sometimes you hold the responsibility of delivering the bad
news. When it comes to delivering the bad
news, there are two parties involved – the giver and the receiver. Understanding the proposition of these two
parties and delivering it right is as important as delivering anything else. That’s the reason I decided to write a
chapter on this topic.
92. What is the Proposition?
Sometimes you win and let the other
person lose irrespective of how you deliver the bad news. Your organization is right-sizing and you
need to let one of your team members go but your position is secure. Or one of your product lines is closing and
you need to lay off a bunch of engineers. When all this is going on you are
getting promoted or you were promoted recently. That is a win-lose.
There can be a situation where you
lost one of your team members – that is a big loss for you. May be your team member joined your competitor
or went to pursue new opportunities. But
you have put together all measures to contain the impact. You are going to tell your customer and
assure that your team is going to make it happen. You are at loss but you are ensuring a win to
your customer. Or you missed your
promotion and perhaps increment too this year. You are there to announce a
nominal or insignificant increment to your team members. Or out of two
high-performers shortlisted for international travel only one has got an
approval to travel because of budget cuts.
You are not impacted but your team member whose travel was not approved
is going to be upset.
You are working on a high
visibility mission-critical project and you come across frequent server
crashes. You have no way of controlling the schedule. It is lose-lose situation for your team and
your customer. Or you failed to bag a large deal because of both known and
unknown reasons. Your team is stranded because of this failure and looming
uncertainty. Or you come to know that
the product to be delivered next week cannot be delivered because of critical
defects. Or your organization decided to close your branch office due to a
major restructuring and slump in business.
The situations are copious. When you know the art and science of
delivering bad news, situations like this can improve your stickiness with your
team and customers. But never have I
come across a situation that can be handled without preparation. Every
situation requires thorough understanding and analysis. Else the end result can
be disastrous. Needless to say, situations like this will have significant
impact on what the ultimate deliverable – a product or a service or something
else.
93. Know Your Customer Expectations
There is no customer in this world
who says, ‘Keep the bad news to yourself, try to turnaround and come back to me
when nothing works and however late it gets’.
Meanwhile it does it mean that you need to take the bad news to customer
before doing your homework.
In 2003, I was fortunate to be part
of a growing team. At that time, I was
managing a portfolio of projects for an independent software vendor. With a team of more than forty engineers, we
were interviewing on all days including weekends to fulfill open positions. Our target was to hire ten more engineers.
Hiring was really a taxing affair in our daily schedule. One of our projects was going off the track –
we were delaying task completion daily with an attitude to catchup at a later
stage. We were three months into that
project.
In one of our project status call in
July our customer asked my project lead, ‘Do you think we can deliver this
product by the end of September?’
‘Let me revisit our plan and come
back to you with a firm answer next week’. That was my lead, Vijay.
Vijay had admitted to me earlier
that he expected a delay. He couldn’t articulate more. I was busy on multiple
projects and ramping up our team. Vijay
and I met to go over the project plan and the status of various tasks. There was a definite delay of four weeks. The
task of delivering this bad news was imminent and daunting in front of us.
It was a bad news because we had no
way of turning that situation around. The situation was out of control. In fact, a month ago, this story was no
different. We did not perceive that
situation right. That was our mistake.
What a learning experience! No
doubt, we missed an opportunity of involving our customer in a timely manner to
find options. In reality, a bad news is a bad news. The longer you keep the
worse it gets.
The next week, Vijay and I
delivered the bad news to our customer. Our customer was furious. Furious
because we delayed the bad news by a month.
Until a week before, we had conducted the show with a false hope that
the situation would improve somehow. And it didn’t.
Hiding bad news does not help
unless you are confident of turning around the situation with no impact on your
stakeholders. When you have that confidence, it is not a bad news. It is an
issue or a tough situation. A situation that you are fully aware and confident
of turning around. With thorough
analysis when you determine that you don’t have that confidence, it is bad news
and nothing else. The immediate next step is to deliver it to your
stakeholders. You can’t afford to delay.
And you must deliver it right.
When you are working towards delivering
something, you exceed estimates. That will result in schedule overrun. There are ways to bring your project back on
track. But after doing all your homework if you come to know that schedule
slippage is inevitable, you must accept that bad news. You can’t delay the process of delivering
that bad news to your stakeholders.
All customers want the bad news
delivered on time! And they want you to be their advisor too. Go
with your suggestions and possible choices to make things happen.
When we met our customer to deliver
the bad news, Vijay started the conversation by putting things in perspective.
Also, he put across his ideas on how our team can deliver the end product in
two phases to minimize the impact of this delay. Our customer liked that idea
and set the expectation again. The
expectation was to deliver the bad news with no delay.
94. Involve Internal Stakeholders
When you communicate bad news to
your customer or an external stakeholder it is highly likely that they are
going to call an internal stakeholder – probably someone up in the
hierarchy. When that happens, unless
your internal stakeholders are aware of the situations, they will be caught
off-guard. That will punch a hole in
your work relationship and the trust factor between you and your internal
stakeholders. Involve your internal stakeholders first. Your boss needs to know
the situation. Present your options and listen. Involve your boss so that she
is not caught off-guard.
Don’t slip things under the carpet!
Once a team member of mine wrote an email to our customer and informed that the
software build did not work due to some reason because of build errors. He did not tell either me – his boss, or my
boss. He sent that email right at the
end of the day and went home. Within thirty minutes my phone was ringing. That
was a call from my customer. She wanted me to conference with my boss to
discuss the situation. Both my boss and
I were unaware of the bad news.
An embarrassing situation!
When it comes to customer
expectation management and delivering bad news, define a process and create a
checklist so that you don’t fail twice.
95. The Server Crashed
Once I was working with a
performance testing team. That was a small team of five bright engineers. In
performance testing projects both the product and platform are critical. By platform, I mean the servers on which we
run the tests. Each test used to consume twenty-four to thirty hours. If there is a server crash when the tests are
running, we must restart the tests. Or find work around if feasible. Workarounds are not guaranteed for all
tests.
In our project, one of the servers
crashed. That was the first time. We rerun the tests. We could manage that delay by putting some
internal measures in place. It happened
twice. And thrice. That was a big
problem as each server crash was challenging our schedule. A bad news. A news which is not as simple as saying,
‘Servers are crashing. We want to the IT department to fix this issue as early
as possible.’ We had to think further and probe if there is another server
available for our project. We need to think further to see if we can shorten
the run time of our tests. We did all that before presenting our case to our
stakeholders. Our approach made everyone
empathize with the situation.
We got
help from all ends to make things right. And our project continued.
Do enough ‘what-if’ analysis. Identify alternate options. Sometimes, it may take a while to solve the
core issue. However, with lateral thinking and pooling in ideas you will find a
way to make progress.
When you deliver a plain bad news,
the next question is obvious. In this example, it is, ‘Yes, It is unfortunate
that the server crashed thrice. If this problem persists, what options do we
have? What do you suggest? Do we have to wait? Or do we have other ideas to
continue our work?’ When you go with the
bad news, be prepared to answer such follow-up questions.
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96. From Peaks to Troughs
Couple of weeks before
Thanksgiving, Tim called Andy for a quick meeting. ‘Andy, can I talk to you for a minute?’ That is how it started. Andy went into Tim’s office. Tim was there to
break the news. Their top management had
decided to right-size. That meant a 20%
staff reduction in Andy’s team. Tim
wanted Andy to stack rank his team members and identify the bottom 20% and then
do a team meeting to set the context among all team members. Andy was worried, as he had handled a similar
situation before.
‘Tim, what if some of the top
performers leave? How can we deliver our
next release which is due in February?’
Tim answered but it was not
convincing. He said, ‘We must tell everyone. And we must retain all our top
performers. We can’t afford to lose them. I am with you.’ Andy nodded with a poker face.
Budget cuts happen every year. That
means bad news. Bad news to team members. When we don’t turn it around, it may
turn out to be a negative impact on customer satisfaction. A vicious cycle. The
mandate from senior management is to let go the shortlisted and retain everyone
else. Does it happen on the ground?
Andy was not convinced. To him it
was not about budget cuts and layoffs. It meant more.
‘All our team members are great
performers. We are doing this because of budget cuts. How about helping them
find jobs and extending their notice period? That will at least encourage our
team in regaining momentum after this episode. I am sure February release is
very important to us and we must look beyond that.’
Every bad news has the potential to
carry long-term consequences. Sure, this
situation had significant impact on the impending product releases.
Tim agreed to deal with the
situation in a comprehensive manner and assure enough assistance to the team
members. Tim and Andy worked with their
HR department and identified some of the top recruiters who can help the
shortlisted team members find a job. This was a crucial part of their homework
before delivering the bad news to their team members.
Every team and every project goes
through its peaks and troughs. Troughs
mean bad news the consequence of which can vary depending on the situation.
However, delivering the bad news right is critical.
97. SPIKES and BREAKS
SPIKES is a six-step protocol for
delivering bad news and it is used in healthcare industry for disclosing
unfavorable information to cancer patients.
Breaking bad news is a complex task.
According to a survey, ninety-nine percent of the respondents reported
that SPIKES was practical and easy to understand. Breaking bad news is learned by observing
experienced professionals. Colleges or
Universities do not provide any training in this subject area. SPIKES defines a protocol on how to deliver
bad news. The six steps of SPIKES focus on preparation, understanding the
context and perception of the patient, knowing the history of the patient,
getting to know how must to reveal, identifying when to reveal the rest and
with whom, giving the knowledge and information to the patient, addressing the
patient’s questions and emotions, planning the next steps and follow through.
The professional who delivers bad
news is a subject matter expert. SPIKES provides the protocol. And the delivery
has to be flawless and legitimate.
Nothing can go wrong. One cannot
afford to design the script when the process of communicating bad news is in
progress. It has to be planned in
advance.
BREAKS is another protocol that
provides a systematic and easy communication strategy for breaking bad news. It has six steps – Background, Rapport,
Exploring, Announce, Kindling and Summarize.
A physician who use BREAKS goes through these steps one by one. She starts with understanding the background
of the patient and the problem or illness and does all the homework. The next
step is to build rapport and enough comfort to initiate the discussion. The
third step is to understand or explore what the patient knows about what has
happened so far and acknowledge and align the patient. The fourth step is to
announce the current situation – the bad news – in a straightforward manner
with empathy without using any jargons. The fifth step, ‘Kindling’ as it
called, is about ascertaining by asking simple questions to ensure that the
patient’s understanding of the situation it correct. The final step is to
summarize the action plan and assure that the physician is there to support in
all ongoing actions.
There are definitive takeaways for
us from SPIKES and BREAKS even though not all situations that involve bad news
in IT industry are life threatening. A
bad news in IT industry can have serious consequences such as loss of money, loss
of trust, brand erosion, loss of market share, loss of jobs and so on. And it travels fast. Hence, one who is
responsible to communicate or deliver bad news must act fast in a systematic
manner before the news spreads and boomerangs.
To do this we need a step-by-step approach. Here are the critical steps I have followed
and wanted to share with the readers.
- Understand the situation well. Have one or two experts with you depending on the situation. Arrive at action plans – possibly two or three options to take things forward.
- Understand the history of the recipient and track record of the relationship. Check if this bad news is because of a recurring issue or risk.
- Understand the power, influence and standpoint of the recipient. Decide if you need to invite additional recipients.
- Schedule a meeting. Set the context. Communicate. Present action plans. Listen. Address concerns. Decide on the next steps.
- Acknowledge and thank everyone who participated.
- Act on the action plan and make it happen.
What is the equivalent of SPIKES
or BREAKS in your organization?
98. Don’t Assume
Don’t assume that the software you
are going to deliver will fare well in production and support millions of
users. Make sure that your system architecture and production infrastructure is
adequate to support millions of users. If any of your team members alert you
about such risk, stop and listen to them. Ask probing questions. It may be a signal of an upcoming bad news.
Obama care website was released to
users on 1st October 2013 and it turned out to be yet another delivery disaster
in the world of IT. Michael Scherer,
Washington Bureau Chief for TIME wrote an article ‘Traffic Didn’t Crash the
Obamacare Site Alone. Bad Coding Did Too’ in which he wrote,
‘After three weeks of breakdowns, Obama
decided that he could no longer stand by his own spin. “Nobody is madder than
me about the fact that the website isn’t working,” he said Oct. 21 in a Rose
Garden speech that instructed others to stop “sugarcoating” the problems. In
fact, the warning signs have been clear for months inside government, even if
the White House failed to sniff them out. Federal auditors raised alarms in
June, warning of missed deadlines and unfinished work. Administration officials
have since put out the call for new contractors, and Silicon Valley talent, to
fix the work.’
On 27th October the
website crashed and it crashed again on Oct 31st. This bad news spread like a virus on both
print and electronic media.
In his news article of Dec 2013
titled ‘White House Declares Obama Care Website Fixed, But Problems Persists’,
Devin Dwyer of ABC News wrote,
‘Insurers continue to complain about
unreliable data on applicants which they receive from the site. And the
administration has not yet completed building the electronic payment system
that will transfer government subsidies to insurance companies to help cover
the cost of plans.’
What lessons do such events offer
you? There are many lessons. I would emphasize on a simple one. It is about
enhancing your anticipatory skills.
Without this you cannot predict what is in store for what you are going
to deliver.
If you don’t identify and deliver
bad news, it becomes a bad news and gets delivered to you. You are answerable!
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99. The Inevitable
It happened sometime in 2002. One of my friends who used to work for a
start-up company. He was in a senior
position. A year ago, he had redefined
the technology road-map and business plan of the company which was in deep
financial trouble. He had interviewed
and hired more than fifty percent of the team members. And he wanted to see a
turnaround but the runway was getting shorter and shorter because of lack of
additional funds. In spite of this, all
employees were confident and wanted to launch their three core products. Some of them accepted pay cuts. Some others put extra efforts. All of them did these together to save the
company. It did not happen and they had to face the reality.
During those days, this was the
story in many other startups as well.
A situation that brings everything
to a full stop. A tough situation. Product lines are closed as the entire business
plan nosedived. You are part of the senior management. You have something to
deliver. You have to deliver the news to your employees, investors and
partners. You must do it before the news appears in a website or a newspaper.
My friend and his senior management
team decided to follow a layered approach. They took all their next level of
direct reports into confidence and explained them the situation. They listened to their suggestions and ideas.
Most of them were against the idea of closing the business. They wanted the
brand to live longer. They ascertained
that that would be the voice of all employees as well. When the CEO and his team facilitated an
all-hands meeting, they started by setting the context and assuring the welfare
of employees. The CEO doubled the notice
period of all employees and assured placement assistance. The HR team worked almost round the clock to
make this happen. A small team of
senior management stayed together and revived the business after a year. No doubt, many employees who had left earlier
came back and joined the team.
Those who work with conviction and
look beyond the setbacks have the capability to sail through tough times and
revive. When we come across a bad news
and when it becomes inevitable, we must remember that there is going to be
something better beyond the inevitable if we have the power to visualize.
6 Workplace Challenges Table of Contents The Runway
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6 Workplace Challenges Table of Contents The Runway
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