> your ICs won’t have the full picture. They really may not understand why certain priorities are set the way they are. You’ll need to take that as feedback for improving internal comms rather than “fixing” the perceived problem, and you certainly don’t want to make empty promises.
One time, my manager gave me negative ratings out of nowhere. In his review, he wrote that I rolled a feature a few days late. I chatted with him and explained that the delay was because of production freezes (see dates) and bureaucratic steps (see dates). He didn't want to hear it. I asked what the consequences were of the delay, did it affect a customer? Did it impact revenue? I knew it didn't because I was always checking in but I wanted to hear it from him.
It was clear the priorities were different. I asked what the priorities were. And he couldn't answer.
To the post's point about fixing internal comms, this manager did not WANT to fix internal comms because the internal comms would sound something like, "I just need everyone to finish everything within the quarter - by the exact date - regardless of any company-wide freezes or red tape - because I get scored on it by my boss. I don't want to be at the bottom of the stack rank".
Hard to have clear and precise internal comms when deadlines and deliverables are just a joke with no business value. They'll be found out.
The interesting thing is that actually honestly communicating "I just need everyone to finish everything within the quarter - by the exact date - regardless of any company-wide freezes or red tape - because I get scored on it by my boss" can easily work; that's a clear measurable goal that gives others clear guidelines on the actual priorities and what can be cut if necessary (e.g. quality or features) and what can't (deadlines) and the team can execute that even if the goal is arbitrary, and the alignment of goals is clear - if you miss deadlines to help customers, then you're not surprised that the boss is unsatisfied with your performance and wants to replace you, and if you can manage the deployment process so that the feature "counts as deployed" (even if it's not really ready) at the arbitrary quarter it needs to, then you're a valuable employee for whom they'll find a way to arrange whatever budget is needed to keep you.
It's especially relevant in B2B work - you have to know what the actual personal goals of the decision makers at your customer business are, because your job is to address that; you're not there to bring them in more revenue or satisfy their customers, your actual goal is to help the manager signing your checks to meet his quarterly KPIs/OKRs/whatever, so you'd better know and prioritize the exact things on that list.
> "I just need everyone to finish everything within the quarter - by the exact date - regardless of any company-wide freezes or red tape - because I get scored on it by my boss" can easily work; that's a clear measurable goal that gives others clear guidelines on the actual priorities
This only works if they actually communicate it before projects start. Which they did not. Which is the whole point of the original article - "internal comms" is the issue. Just being honest and timely is sometimes enough but management doesn't think they can do that.
One time, my manager gave me negative ratings out of nowhere. In his review, he wrote that I rolled a feature a few days late. I chatted with him and explained that the delay was because of production freezes (see dates) and bureaucratic steps (see dates). He didn't want to hear it. I asked what the consequences were of the delay, did it affect a customer? Did it impact revenue? I knew it didn't because I was always checking in but I wanted to hear it from him.
It was clear the priorities were different. I asked what the priorities were. And he couldn't answer.
To the post's point about fixing internal comms, this manager did not WANT to fix internal comms because the internal comms would sound something like, "I just need everyone to finish everything within the quarter - by the exact date - regardless of any company-wide freezes or red tape - because I get scored on it by my boss. I don't want to be at the bottom of the stack rank".
Hard to have clear and precise internal comms when deadlines and deliverables are just a joke with no business value. They'll be found out.