Red Is Not a Problem As Long As It Is the Truth

By Vicki Wrona, PMP:

I was recently working at the world’s largest software developer when one of the managers made a statement that really stuck with me. We were talking about reporting and she said, “Red is not a problem as long as it is the truth.” After that, she proceeded to discuss the consequences of not reporting the truth about a project on a status report and/or in a meeting.

The reason this stuck with me is because we’ve all heard management say things like this, but often it’s done in a hollow or insincere way. We don’t often see them act consistently with what they have said. I have no doubt this person would follow through on her words based on other senior management and direct reports that were in the room and agreed with her. We have all worked with management who have either changed our numbers or altered the picture we reported when rolling our status up to their management. We’ve all worked with management who didn’t really want to hear the real story, and who hid from the truth of what was really happening on our projects. That was most definitely not the case here. And it was very refreshing to hear.

Her attitude, as it should be, was that as a PM, we report the truth. If we are starting to get a little behind on our projects, we say so and then discuss what we are doing to get back on track. The idea is to report the facts; don’t over react, don’t under react. The same goes if we are experiencing more issues than planned, or we experience unfavorable trends, or things are escalating more than they should. As PMs, we need to be aware of the warning signs earlier rather than later and take appropriate action. They key is that first we report, then we decide what to do about it. We don’t simply complain.

Sometimes, management has to adjust a PM’s report because that PM is simply complaining rather than reporting factual status with a plan of action. In this case, management may have to adjust a PM’s report before rolling it up to more senior management to better reflect reality. This is not what I was referring to earlier in this post. Reflecting reality and responsibility is the end goal of what we want our reports and our actions to do.

Does your management want to hear the truth? Do they support you when you report the truth along with your action plan?