How you can have an informed conversation about change without hearing the problem out?

If you trust someone that much, why are you even in the loop? Why are you badgering them at all? This is just bad management pretending to offer underlings autonomy. As soon as it fails, everyone loses their job.

Is this Five Whys from First Principles?

I thought keeping details away from c-suit regardless of how technical these people are was the standard thing to do. Your job is to make these guys work the minimum. We fucked up, we fixed it and it won’t happen again. They don’t need to know anything else. You could upload the forensics report to a share drive and make the link available if they want to see it, but most times they won’t bother.

I can understand the inclination, but actually I /do/ want the details, because without the details I cannot consider and measure if the change proposed is a reasonable pathway to help manage the class of problem. Many times, people in organizations while well-meaning are siloed and focused specifically in their own niche and therefore will propose changes that cannot be coherent in any holistic manner across all the parts of the organization that would need to be affected by the change. That means you /do/ need to understand the details, and also have a big picture view.

The executive is there to help with the big picture, but you can't see the big picture if the canvas is blank.

Your svp is a bad manager

> Understanding an issue is not the same as fixing it. A good explanation can make things worse.

I couldn't disagree more. "A problem well stated is a problem half solved."

Why are these SVPs even needed anymore? They seem to do nothing of value.

If you ask them, of course they will make up a bs story with their fake answer. The fact is that they fail the ablation test.

No. They should always get the full details.

Neurotypical executive toxic attitudes should be shamed.

Making informed decisions based on assumptions or guesses is always going to result in terrible outcomes.

> The executive assumed that we were competent, and was saying "I already believe you. Now let's talk about what happens next".

Apropos, I was once told a Japanese saying: "Fix the problem, not the blame."

I must have repeated this charming story a dozen times before realizing it makes no sense in Japanese -- it relies entirely on English idioms.

SVP seems like such a useless appendage in the story.

He doesn’t want the details, he just wants someone else to tell him what they’re gonna do. But if he doesn’t know the details, he won’t understand if the plan will make things better or worse.

So… what exactly is this presumably valuable person there to do? Just to gage the confidence in the room? Presumably everyone was confident before the mistake happened.

What does this person who just wants a solution add? Why isn’t he fostering a discussion and adding his insight? Why is he in the room at all?