No surprises

While scrounging around in old files yesterday, I came across this from Follow the Yellow Brick Road: Learning to Give, Take & Use Instruction by Richard Saul Wurman -  another fascinating writer. (His Information Anxiety is also a classic.)

Life on mahogany row is complicated further by the reluctance of most employees to bear bad news to their bosses. No one wants to be responsible for delivering disagreeable tidings to a superior. So lower-level employees will tend to gloss over negative information. As the information moves upwards in the company hierarchy, it tends to be cast in a more positive light.  Information may get so filtered or distorted by fear or even just by retelling that if it ever makes it to the top, it is likely to be out of date, exaggerated, or patently wrong.

improving...
needs adjustment
needs fixing
problematic
bad
Very Bad
Terrible
HORRIBLE
CATASTROPHIC

I think CEOs ought to have a placard behind their desk that reads No Surprises.  No surprises means getting the bad news as well as the good. ... The lack of computer knowledge fosters isolation. Computers used to be for engineers. Ten years ago, people could afford the luxury of being technologically illiterate. They could brag about not being able to turn on a computer, work their answering machines, or program their VCRs. Now they find themselves isolated from their most effective and up-to-date source of information. And while the capabilities of their employees were enhanced by computer literacy, their own are diminished.

This observation really hit home after having just finished reading Thomas E. Ricks's Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq and listening to continuing new stories on NPR in which the death toll in Iraq continues to mount while the Bush administration continues to say how much better things are getting there. Is anyone telling President Bush the bad news?

Enough politics - that's not what this blog is about. But I've long been advising library media specialists that one key to a good relationship with their principal is the "No Surprises" rule.  Keep your supervisor apprised of both your program's problems and successes. A principal never wants to feel left out of the loop. S/he should never hear about what is happening in the library from someone before s/he hears it from you.

No surprises this year, OK?