How do you deliver bad news without becoming a casualty? (This is Donald Trump. You’re fired!) Well, it’s something I recently had to find out for myself, but I’ll give you the punch line now:

Take ‘em by surprise!

About a year ago on one of my projects, our project team (the client’s and ours) discovered a way to save the project nearly 24% of its total installed cost (this is referred to in engineering as TIC) to the tune of about a million dollars. Naturally we were heroes (well, at least for a few days).

But since then, our final estimate (why yes, Regis, that is my final answer) was much higher than expected and as usual caused some heartburn (somebody please hand me the Rolaids!). There were also a number of changes that surfaced during the design phase (where we are now).

Recently I was called upon to explain (or, as Ricky Ricardo would say, ‘esplain’) why we were predicting a 15% overrun in the project’s TIC forecast. This experience is something like being the kid in the picture shown above; you know everyone is aiming for the apple, but you just hope nobody misses.

So there I was, sitting in a room with about 20 high-level managers including the client’s Manager of Projects (MOP). As almost anyone can testify, being put on the spot is not the most fun experience, even though I was confident of my answers. (I would have still preferred to be in my dentist’s chair getting a root canal.)

(By the way, it’s our normal practice to do this in order to identify what we call “lessons learned”. Not fun, mind you, but normal.)

Well, the moment arrived, and as all eyes turned on me (you could almost feel the spotlights coming on), I decided the best approach would be to balance the bad news with some good news first. So I stood up, calmly looked the MOP right in the eye, and boldly stated the following

“Let me first remind everyone,” I said, “back when this project started we came up with a value idea that saved the project about 25%. Now, as to the current overrun, here’s how it breaks down…” and then proceeded to outline the salient points. My whole speech took less than thirty seconds, tops, and then I sat down.

There was a moment of silence in the room until (finally!) the MOP got a grin on his face and said wryly, “Wow, you’re good!” The entire tone of the meeting changed, and I distinctly heard another manager comment, “Man, I’m takin’ him with me next time my project needs explaining!”

What’s interesting is that all I did was help put a little balance back into the way people were thinking about the project. It didn’t change the facts – we’re still 15% over (not good, but there it is), but it enabled people to look at the bigger picture and see the whole story

And by the way, the message was powerful because it contained four of the six key characteristics of sticky messages from Made to Stick: surprise (the delivery), unexpected (consider this, not that), concrete (a million dollars) and credible (project team’s authority).

The lessons learned:

1. The part is not the whole – As we began to focus on one particular challenge (overrun = bad = more $$$$), I recognized the danger of losing sight of the bigger picture.
2. Surprise can bring about a beneficial interruption - By surprising them, I jogged people out of their mindset long enough to see something else.
3. Don’t hesitate to remind people of great accomplishments! – “If you got ‘em, flaunt ‘em,” I always say! Nobody was upset with me for reminding them of GOOD, CONCRETE, and VERIFIABLE facts.
4. The balanced view just works better – Once the balance had been reestablished, our entire meeting became more productive; everyone paid more attention.