Why managers must guard against shooting the messenger

In his autobiography, eminent economist J. K. Galbraith relates a conversation with a Soviet editor in the early 1970s. Galbraith learned that the Russian Institute for Sociology had been asked to undertake a nationwide audit of all firms in order to assess that country’s state of honesty. After extensive research, it was discovered that all of the senior management officials had been enhancing their incomes in one irregular fashion or another.

This was bad news: after all, Lenin had argued that under socialism, “all acquisitive instincts disappear”. Galbraith asked his Russian friend how the Party had reacted to the upsetting news from the audit. “The Party took it very seriously,” he was told. “They cracked down on sociology”.

Few of us working in organisations are entirely comfortable taking bad news on board. Bad news often reflects someone’s failure, perhaps our own. This can create an environment in which only good news can be passed on. Yet as businessman John Harvey-Jones used to argue, the salesperson who always makes the sale should be fired: a permanent diet of good news from the sales staff reflects either that they aren’t trying sufficiently hard, or that their pricing is too soft.

But difficult as it may sometimes be, managers must be on their guard against responding like the Cold War Russians. By shooting the bringer of the bad tidings we: (1) paper over the problems; (2) do nothing to prevent matters from getting worse; and (3) discourage the further flow of real information. When we place our management heads in the sand, it sometimes leads to the very demise of our institutions.

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