I was on a call recently with the senior leader in an organization. During that call, a problem surfaced which we began discussing vigorously. One of the subordinates on the call was having a visible panic attack. She was horrified that a problem was being brought up in front of her leader in such a manner. No preparation. No triage. No cover story. Nothing, just plain, raw truth, unfiltered and real-time. This reaction caused me to pause and think this through. I am naturally inclined to pull all the skeletons out of the closet as soon as I discover that they are there. I want everyone to know as fast as possible so that a solution may be derived quickly. However, her reaction was much different, and that is when I realized that the leader is always the last to know.
I was doing some research on field notes from the German army during the later days of World War II. The pending catastrophic collapse of the Normandy area was well known by the officers. They knew that the muscle and sheer volume of machinery and ammunition being produced by the United States was going to crush them. The level of intel they had was astonishing, actually, but by the time this got up to Adolf Hitler and his inner circle, the doomed defense of the coastline was largely dismissed as a minor inconvenience. This is often the case in hierarchical systems, where subordinates are fearful of reprimand regarding negative or poor reports.
I read a study on an effort by a U.S. company to introduce topsoil composting to provinces in southern India many years ago. They taught methods and procedures on how to produce more topsoil. This was necessary due to the devastating effect the monsoon season could have on fertile soil. As any good U.S. company would do, they created a reporting system so they could accurately calculate what each farmer was generating from composting efforts. The problem is that they did not understand this same phenomenon in reverse. Each farmer would report to their superior a slight exaggeration of soil production. Due to the number of mid-level reports, by the time this reached the top reporting structure in the government, there was enough compost to cover the entire planet, much less southern India.
The point in all of this is that if you are the leader, if you are the person in the dominant position, the one that is funding everyone in the reporting chain, then you should expect nothing less than this phenomenon. The court that you oversee will only tell you what you want to hear. You could be the biggest clown that everyone laughs at when you leave the room, but when you are there, everyone will treat every ridiculous thing you say and do with grand gestures and seriousness. As long as you continue to pay the bills, of course. So you may not know this; you could be the laughingstock of your own company, and you would be slow to find out. All you see is nodding heads and polite smiles.
That is on a personal basis; what is worse is that the direction you are heading could be completely wrong and ultimately going to lead to the death of the organization. You will think that you are helping; you will go into the conference room and jump up and down with all manner of enthusiasm and exclaim imminent success if everyone would just follow your course, but then a few months later, you will discover that the boat went right off the edge of a waterfall and everyone that you thought really liked you silently got off the ship and watched it happen. Not saying a word, because, after all, the king is the last to know.
This has repeated constantly throughout history and in many corporations. Failure is often seen well in advance by everyone except for who really needs to know. This is something to keep in mind as you raise your voice, flap your arms, and boast of how awesome everything is. You could very well be saying something that you believe to be an absolute possibility, when everyone around you knows the real truth: your demise is a foregone conclusion. I have seen many leaders that pride themselves on being "good with people" find out the truth later on: they were only good because they learned to say they were good so that you would go away. The pompous royalty that sits on the throne, basking in their glory right up until the horde is at the gates.
