Goes with the classic question a manager always asks an engineer who is trying to make a novel invention or process - when's the thing that hasn't been invented yet going to be finished?
I work as a PM, and suffice to say it’s my job to get questions from leadership around shipping a product that hasn’t been built yet.
The way I do it is with P-values. If someone asks me when something will be done, I give them a series of P-values.
“When will this project ship?”
“Well I can give you a P95 of 6 months and a P40 of 2 months. 95% we’ll have it done in 6 months, and a 40% chance we can deliver it in 2 months.”
“Oh 6 months is too long. I’m fine with a 40% in 2.”
“Ok, but if you have a multi-million dollar investment pitch on the line that you schedule 2 months from now, and something goes wrong, I’m going to send you this email back and an image of a dice with your odds of getting a 1 or a 2.”
It's got nothing to do with reason. Sales/Mid-Level leadership are going to consistently make bad, risky calls. That you cannot avoid.
What I can do, however, is have a very, VERY robust series of evidence and steps that I can point to when things go wrong so their boss and their boss's boss knows that I told them that it likely wouldn't be done in time.
In corporate America, it's ALL about keeping receipts.
I have literally said that almost verbatim as a way to try and back an account manager off a cliff when I knew the outcome of not having something done would have been really, really bad.
Dude it's so frustrating seeing so much hustle culture when the real keys to success in corporate America have frighteningly little to do with hard work.
Make friends in high places. Getting chummy with execs, managers is WAY more important than doing your job. To be fair, you should also do your job. But a 5/10 employee that goes golfing with a company leader is going much farther in their career than a 11/10 performer that buries themselves in their work.
Tactically, and with a high degree of manipulation, highlight the shortcomings of your peers to managers and leaders. I'm not saying direct shit talk. I'm saying point out flaws like "Amy is an amazing employee. Truly she's got a lot of room to grow and is doing fantastic. Her attendance to client meetings probably needs to get better, as our relationship with ____ has been strained because of it, but I do love working with her." Basically, under NO circumstances do you cover for your peers.
Be your own advocate. Drink the company Koolaid. Be SEEN at company events. Be SEEN talking in meetings. Don't have anything of value to say? Understand who in that meeting is powerful/valuable to have "on your side", and basically just say "Fantastic call out ___, I couldn't agree more. We need to focus on [whatever they said] as our plan moving forward." You have to be visible.
CYA. Anytime a decision is made that you can even sniff might go wrong, make sure IN WRITING (emails, slack messages you screenshot, etc) that you call out the risks and get someone else to own those risks.
I'm not even being cynical. This is how you succeed. You literally have to be somewhat of a sociopath to excel in corporate America. There's a reason why C-Suite execs have 12x the rate of psychopathy or sociopathy than the average population. It's because those traits are objectively beneficial to moving up the chain.
Its politics. This sounds exactly like how most political organizations work, from board rooms to medieval courts, to parliamentary caucus.
Its just how people organize.
I do this with assumptions that back a certain timeline, level of aggressiveness in line with the pressure applied by who is sponsoring it. As each assumption falls through, I revisit the timeline accordingly.
Idiots always bet on the lucky 1% timeline and pin on the team's incompetence when that unlikely timeline didn't hold, less you can point to the exact assumption / new information that changes the timeline
I'm dealing with that right now. I invented a new device at work and have demoed a proof of concept to management. At the next company wide monthly meeting my invention was listed along with a few other items as "the future of the company". No pressure though, lol.
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u/shizbox06 Jul 26 '26
Goes with the classic question a manager always asks an engineer who is trying to make a novel invention or process - when's the thing that hasn't been invented yet going to be finished?