Credit and Blame

If you lead projects for long enough, you’ll get credit for things you didn’t really do.

You’ll also get blamed for things that weren’t really your fault.

Both come with the job.

The credit bit is easier.

Something goes well and a senior person tells you what a great job you did. Maybe you did do a great job. But usually there are a load of other people who made it happen too, and some of them are much less likely to get noticed.

Point that out.

Not in the fake-humble, “Oh, it was all the team, I did nothing” way. You probably did plenty.

Just make sure the right people get seen.

“Sarah really drove that piece.”

“The engineering team pulled us out of a hole there.”

“John deserves the credit for getting that over the line.”

Particularly when you’re talking to senior people those people don’t normally get much exposure to.

It costs you nothing.

And people notice when you do the opposite. We’ve all worked with someone who has a remarkable ability to be standing at the front when the praise arrives.

Don’t be that person.

The blame bit is harder.

A deadline slips. Something breaks. A stakeholder is pissed off. You’re in the meeting getting the criticism.

And maybe you know exactly what happened.

Someone on the team missed something. Somebody made a bad call. You warned them. You chased them. You have the email.

There can be a very strong temptation to explain all of that.

Be careful.

There’s a difference between explaining what happened and making sure everybody in the room knows it wasn’t your fault.

If you’re leading the project, take the conversation. What happened? What does it mean? What are we doing about it? Do we need a decision? How do we recover?

That doesn’t mean pretending nobody made a mistake, and it definitely doesn’t mean protecting people from accountability.

If somebody screwed up, deal with it. If there’s a performance problem, deal with that too.

Just don’t use the stakeholder meeting to save yourself by throwing somebody else under the bus.

Your team will notice.

If people think the first thing you’ll do when the pressure arrives is point at them, they’ll behave accordingly. They’ll tell you less. They’ll take fewer risks. They’ll make very sure their own backs are covered.

And now you’ve got a bigger problem.

I’ve generally worked to a pretty simple rule:

Positive feedback can come directly from senior stakeholders.

Negative feedback should normally come through me.

Not always. Nothing is always.

But as a rule, I like it.

Push the credit towards the people who earned it.

Deal with the shit without immediately looking for somewhere else to put it.