I hate surprises from my staff. You can surprise me on my birthday or at Christmas, but I never want any surprises when it comes to business. One important concept of management that is never taught, and rarely discussed is how badly managers hate surprises. Surprises can come in many forms. A project may be late, an important sale doesn’t materialize, or the budget gets blown. Whatever it is, we hate them. Now, that is not to say we hate bad news in general. We may not like it, but if you give management enough time to react, then we can manage the bad news. It is a simple concept, but many people are simply not taught it, and therefore don’t teach it to their staff. Let’s say that you are an important member of a team of programmers all working on a major system. The rest of the team is very dependent upon your contribution to be completely successful. You are toiling away in private, but for some reason you just keep slipping farther and farther behind. You begin to realize you are going to be a week late, but choose not to share that information with your supervisor
