I don't want the details

> Understanding an issue is not the same as fixing it. A good explanation can make things worse.

I couldn't disagree more. "A problem well stated is a problem half solved."

We write up timelines. We reconstruct decisions. We explain dependencies. At the end of it, we hand over a document that contains the specific combination of events that led to the incident. Everyone nods their head, says "that makes sense", and we all move on with our day.

...huh? I've been in corporate America for 19 years now and I've never once had this happen. I've never seen anyone just look for the cause and not ask what can be done to prevent it in the future. Everyone KNOWS that question is coming next.

This is just a LinkedIn post.

> ...I'll empathise with you. Then it'll happen again.

I'm not so sure this means "I trust you."

> At first I thought "I don't want the details" sounded dismissive.

Well that is because it was delivered by someone who was actually being dismissive!

If they want to know what "we are changing" but don't want to know any detail as to why, even presented at an appropriate level, they are very likely looking for you to take all the risk of the decision and they are dismissing your need to have the necessary informed consent for it to become the we.

Now, if you're presenting that information at a level of detail that is truly irrelevant or deep, that is your problem to fix.

But otherwise be very wary of this pattern of communication where "we" might mean "you". Anyone with any sense of risk management should know not to do this.

If you have not seen it, watch Margin Call. When you get to the boardroom scene [0] you'll see this play out, but you will also see the (pretty rapacious, direct) boss understand properly that the information he is getting from a low ranking employee is nevertheless his problem to understand, even if only at a 10,000 feet level.

Beyond the drama of the way the scene ends, it's actually a very good model of how that interaction should play out for everyone — making it clear that everyone in the room shares in the "we" of it, including the decisionmaker.

I have been in rooms where it played out at least something like that, where the boss wants to make an attempt to share the burden of the detail, and I've been able to leave them feeling somewhat supported, or at least without feeling like I was being shafted.

And I've been in rooms with people who don't want to know the details but just want to know what "we" are going to fix — those guys have never been as good to work for. If they say "we" but leave you with the impression they may mean "you", it's bad.

[0] said scene, but really, really, watch the film if you never have:

https://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechma...

How you can have an informed conversation about change without hearing the problem out?

If you trust someone that much, why are you even in the loop? Why are you badgering them at all? This is just bad management pretending to offer underlings autonomy. As soon as it fails, everyone loses their job.

> [The Manager] continued:

>> I know that if we get into the details, the reasons will be perfectly reasonable. You'll explain what happened, I'll understand why everyone made the decisions they made, and I'll empathise with you.

>> Then it'll happen again.

>> So I don't want the details. I want to know what we're changing.

Even if the manager's approach was correct, this is just a hurtful way to frame it to your team. It's great that the author could reverse-engineer what the manager was doing, but it shouldn't come to that.

Why couldn't the manager say something like:

> You are all great engineers, so I already know that everyone made the best decision available with the information they had at the time. What are we going to do differently moving forward?

I'm still not sure I agree with the strategy, because I don't see how you can understand what happens next without understanding what went wrong. But I can see how the framing might help steer the discussion.

I thought keeping details away from c-suit regardless of how technical these people are was the standard thing to do. Your job is to make these guys work the minimum. We fucked up, we fixed it and it won’t happen again. They don’t need to know anything else. You could upload the forensics report to a share drive and make the link available if they want to see it, but most times they won’t bother.

Is this Five Whys from First Principles?

I can understand the inclination, but actually I /do/ want the details, because without the details I cannot consider and measure if the change proposed is a reasonable pathway to help manage the class of problem. Many times, people in organizations while well-meaning are siloed and focused specifically in their own niche and therefore will propose changes that cannot be coherent in any holistic manner across all the parts of the organization that would need to be affected by the change. That means you /do/ need to understand the details, and also have a big picture view.

The executive is there to help with the big picture, but you can't see the big picture if the canvas is blank.

Your svp is a bad manager

Why are these SVPs even needed anymore? They seem to do nothing of value.

If you ask them, of course they will make up a bs story with their fake answer. The fact is that they fail the ablation test.

No. They should always get the full details.

Neurotypical executive toxic attitudes should be shamed.

Making informed decisions based on assumptions or guesses is always going to result in terrible outcomes.

> The executive assumed that we were competent, and was saying "I already believe you. Now let's talk about what happens next".

Apropos, I was once told a Japanese saying: "Fix the problem, not the blame."

I must have repeated this charming story a dozen times before realizing it makes no sense in Japanese -- it relies entirely on English idioms.

SVP seems like such a useless appendage in the story.

He doesn’t want the details, he just wants someone else to tell him what they’re gonna do. But if he doesn’t know the details, he won’t understand if the plan will make things better or worse.

So… what exactly is this presumably valuable person there to do? Just to gage the confidence in the room? Presumably everyone was confident before the mistake happened.

What does this person who just wants a solution add? Why isn’t he fostering a discussion and adding his insight? Why is he in the room at all?

If I'm to explain what needs to change, that will by definition address processes or lack thereof that led to the problem, no? Which is then explaining what happened and why in an indirect manner, so many of the proposed changes may not make sense without more context.

I would not have said that. I would have asked for the details and tried to find the gaps because, almost always, something could have been done. Then the question is how much risk reduction are you willing to pay for.

The quote box at the start of the article is the essence of it, the rest is AI-speak dressing it up.

TLDR:

Some outage causes a meeting with an SVP. SVP preempts the discussion with the following:

“I know that if we get into the details, the reasons will be perfectly reasonable. You'll explain what happened, I'll understand why everyone made the decisions they made, and I'll empathise with you.

Then it'll happen again.

So I don't want the details. I want to know what we're changing.”

Bootlicking apologia for a bad boss.

i don't want to sound like a douchebag but isn't figuring out what went wrong and how to prevent next time kind of an obvious goal

I learned this myself while yelling at AI.

I get triggered from these Linkedin bs type of articles. In the real world time and money is limited and everything gets prioritized. I worked at corps were MOST of the incidents reoccurred cause fixes was never prioritized. Cheaper to have people on call than to fix stuff.

I'm giving you the details because I'm going to give you options for solutions and I need priority information about those solutions, and you need to be informed about the trade-offs and costs of each option because you have better knowledge of our overarching objectives than I do.

If our overarching objectives don't impact our on-the-ground decisions, what are you even for?