Good governance depends on leaders having an accurate view of what is happening across delivery. Yet difficult messages can be softened, delayed or filtered as they move through an organisation, creating a gap between governance reporting and delivery reality.
Key Insights:
- Governance structures can function exactly as designed, on-time reporting, regular SteerCos, clear escalation, and still fail to give leaders an accurate view of delivery if the information moving through them has been softened along the way.
- The gap between what’s reported and what’s real sits on both sides of the relationship: leaders who make bad news unwelcome, and teams who choose the safer story over the accurate one.
- A PMO’s ability to challenge the information it receives, not just process it, determines whether leaders see genuine risk or a filtered version of it.
Leaders can become disconnected from the reality of what’s happening in their businesses, particularly in high-pressure environments where people feel unable to challenge the prevailing view. There are important consequences for leaders and their teams when only the good news story is told.
The same problem plays out in transformation. Governance structures may be working as intended, with regular reporting, SteerCo meetings and established escalation paths, yet the information reaching leaders can still present a very different picture from the reality of delivery. Difficult messages may be softened or delayed as they move through the organisation, leaving risks hidden until they become much harder to manage.
We all see leaders who dominate and see themselves as unquestionably ‘right’, leaving those around them feeling they can only say what’s safe to say. Simply having an open-door policy is not enough to facilitate speaking truth to power.
There are obvious and less obvious consequences for challenging leadership. Whether it’s at an executive level or at a project level, there are many reasons people go with the flow rather than speaking truth to power.
Why project teams stay quiet about delivery risk
Leaders can get disconnected from the reality of what’s going on in their businesses and, in high-pressure environments, some staff feel unable to challenge the equilibrium for fear of downflow consequences for their careers, their teams or their projects.
When leaders don’t have the right information, it can be difficult for them to know where the problem lies. Are people reluctant to speak up? Is the organisation making it difficult for uncomfortable information to travel upwards? Or has filtering difficult news simply become part of the culture?
Take, as an example, the PMO and its role in accountability.
One of the core functions of a PMO is governance over project reporting. For CEOs and other senior executives, information flowing upwards should be accurate, independent and fearless in calling out the risks and issues that could affect the outcomes the business hopes to achieve.
Unfortunately, people don’t always feel able to share difficult information openly, for a number of reasons.
Why leaders unintentionally filter out bad news
Many organisations work on an unwritten ‘less-is-more’ policy when it comes to the delivery of bad news. Executives may even become extremely nervous or even hostile when it arrives on their desk.
The consequence is that those reporting to the executive may start to only feed through the good news rather than the realities of a situation to avoid a negative response to unwanted news. That can undermine the accuracy of reporting and make it much harder for executives to make informed decisions.
How can any leader make the right decisions without the full picture, good or bad?
For transformation leaders, that makes the quality of information flowing through governance just as important as the governance structures themselves. A SteerCo can meet regularly, reporting can arrive on time and escalation paths can be clearly defined, but none of that guarantees leaders are seeing the full picture. If difficult information is being filtered before it reaches the decision-makers, apparently healthy governance can mask a very different delivery reality.
Why teams withhold bad news even when leaders want it
But what happens when leaders do want to know how business units or projects are really progressing, but the teams below them are reluctant to deliver bad news? Let’s assume they want the relevant information, good or bad, to make the best possible decisions.
An inexperienced project team, or one that lacks confidence in delivering difficult news, may not send critical information back up the reporting chain. The reasons can vary, from organisational culture and internal politics to a simple lack of experience.
This can leave leaders surrounded by so-called ‘watermelon’ projects: those that look green on the outside but are red once you look beneath the surface. It can be even harder to see the problem at program level, where individual projects may appear healthy while dependencies between them are already putting broader outcomes at risk.
Culture therefore matters on both sides of the reporting relationship. If people believe they should tell leaders what they think they want to hear rather than what they need to hear, leaders lose the visibility they need to make good decisions and project outcomes are put at risk.
Why a PMO’s authority determines reporting accuracy
The PMO has an important role to play in maintaining accurate reporting and ensuring project risks and challenges are visible to decision-makers. It can also provide an independent view of what’s happening across delivery, particularly when individual project teams are under pressure to meet their commitments.
Not every PMO, however, has the authority or experience to challenge the information it receives. When that happens, problems can be accepted at face value and risks may not reach executives until they have become much harder to manage.
This is where reporting and assurance intersect. Strong governance doesn’t automatically mean strong assurance, particularly as new technologies such as AI introduce risks and dependencies that traditional assurance approaches may not be designed to examine. Both depend on the organisation’s ability to challenge assumptions and bring emerging risks into view.
A PMO that can ask difficult questions and challenge the prevailing view gives leaders a more accurate picture of delivery. Without that challenge, even well-established governance structures can provide confidence that doesn’t reflect what’s happening on the ground.
How to build a culture where news is neither good nor bad, but just news
It’s human nature to want to be liked, and delivering difficult news is rarely comfortable. However, the alternative can do far more damage. When problems are softened or filtered as they move through an organisation, leaders lose the opportunity to respond while there’s still time to make a difference.
For project professionals, that makes courage and accuracy in reporting essential. Difficult conversations are part of complex delivery, particularly when projects are under pressure. Leaders need an accurate view of what’s happening on the ground if they’re going to make informed decisions about what happens next.
Governance structures can create the channels for that information to flow, but they can’t guarantee that people will use them. The real test is whether the culture around those structures allows people to raise concerns and deliver news that leaders may not want to hear. Without that, the gap between what governance reports and the reality of delivery can become a hidden risk in its own right.
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