Necessary Roughness

There seem to be three big no-no’s in our corporate culture which if committed would give some inkling to leadership of the magnitude of a task:

• Saying, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”
• Saying, “I would require help to get that done in the expected time.”
• Admitting a mistake, especially if we spent money on it.

Any one signals incompetence to the manager when it should signal task re-evaluation. Employees then are afraid of losing their jobs to someone who says they can perform the task (but won’t), instead of being free to do what they can and report obstacles in their path. It rarely costs more to teach a skill to an existing employee than to go out and train up a new hire.

A clarification: I didn’t get in trouble. This is a general observation of activities I am not a party to.