FRANK LEONARD – A stone-faced ‘I’m aware of it, and it is under control’ is much more reassuring than ‘OMG’
I had a brown ceramic Easter egg in my Mayor’s office ( 1996-2014 · Saanich ) to remind me about my ‘ no surprises ’ rule. Visitors would ask about it and I’d just say it was a bit of décor but for me, it was a great deal more. When I assume a leadership role in governance of a public or private sector organization, I go through the briefings and hear all that senior management want me to know. As it starts to wind up, I do work in a few rules that I like to have in place – one of them is ‘no surprises.’ If something has gone wrong, I want management to tell me. In fact, if something is going wrong, or they think something might go wrong, I want management to tell me. Under no circumstances do I want to be ‘out of the loop’ about an issue, incident, or something much worse that is within my oversight. Most often there is nothing for me to do – and in fact, doing something might even be inappropriate but I still need to kno...