Cover Your Ass - Part II

I was talking with my friend Jeff yesterday and we started talking about covering your ass. "Funny would should mention that," I say. Now, I trust Jeff completely, despite the fact that he is tight with Satan (the big boss where I work), so I had no problem telling him that I believe that Satan is where the problem starts.

Well, Jeff looked as if every neuron in his brain misfired and blood might start to drip from his tear ducts and his ears. To my surprise, he only said "I haven't seen that." We didn't really have a chance to finish the discussion.

When Satan asks questions regarding problems, it is invariably a who question: who knew, who decided, who did; you get the idea. When the first thing someone wants to know is who, that means they are coming for you and this promotes a culture of CC: and read receipts for every minor "communication". Oh, and by the way, he has every "communication" he has sent or received since 2000 or something crazy like that. Cover your ass.

I have to believe that if the conversations here where of the what, where, when and why sort, we might actually learn some things from our mistakes. Questions like:

1. What happened?
2. Is this an isolated incident, or a re-occurring one?
3. What was the result?
4. Which customers and how were they impacted?
5. How can we do it differently?

You see, these questions will lead unthreateningly to the who, and people may actually have an opportunity to learn something from a situation.

Who looks like you are building a case. Take for example the broken speaker that "someone" knew about for three weeks and yet nothing was done about it. My boss, assistant-Satan, goes on the hunt for who knew, rather than, ok, I know about it now, lets get it fixed and make sure everyone knows who to report these problems to in the future so things aren't left hanging. Every question was who, instead of where was the process breakdown.

So we work here in this CYA culture, for now. Would it be gauche to post my résumé here and solicit comments, or better yet, job offers?