No Surprises
No Surprises I had a brown ceramic easter egg in my Mayor’s office to remind me about my ‘no surprises’ rule. Visitors would ask about it and I’d just say it was a bit of décor but for me, it was a great deal more. When I assume a leadership role in governance of a public or private sector organization I go through the briefings and hear all that senior management want me to know. As it starts to wind up, I do work in a few rules that I like to have in place – one of them is ‘no surprises.’ If something has gone wrong, I want management to tell me. In fact if something is going wrong or they think something might go wrong, I want management to tell me. Under no circumstances do I want to be ‘out of the loop’ about an issue, incident or something much worse that is within my oversight. Most often there is nothing for me to do – and in fact, doing something might even be inappropriate but I still need to know…..in case there is. I will choose to filter, not have it