[ekidd]

If the work would have mattered to you, you would have found a solution.

This is an easy thing to say, and perhaps for many people in many circumstances, it's true enough.

But I have no doubts about my work ethic—I've spent 50+ hours per week in the zone at a startup, until I hit my physical limits—and I can estimate project scope reliably enough to offer my consulting clients fixed bids.

But even so, I do occasionally have to e-mail a client and tell them that something will be delayed by a few days, or even a week. It's not that the work isn't important, but rather that when I push hard enough, there's no padding left, and a few days of illness (or caring for a sick kid) come directly out of work time. Similarly, sometimes there's a hard technical issue that nobody expected, and it takes some time to engineer around.

So for people already working near the top of their game, this manager's notebook and attitude comes over as so much motivational B.S. Professionals work hard. But if 90% of challenging projects come in on time, and the other 10% slip by a few days or a week, that's not necessarily evidence of moral failure.

[ZoFreX]

In situations like that, the real reason is often deeper than the "excuse". I'm a big fan of "five why's' [1] for root cause analysis. I think finding the root cause is far more important than differentiating between reasons and excuses, or belittling people because you think their reasons aren't good enough.

Example: "Laptop ran out of battery" - is that really a bad excuse? What if there aren't enough charging points in the office, so not everyone can keep their laptops topped up all at the same time? Analysing the surface reason alone is not enough to know whether it has merit, there may be a valid root cause for what appears to be a poor excuse.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys