[hinkley]

In general people don't want to hear that they have a problem from anyone but themselves. I've had so many I Told You So moments with certain individuals that at some point you just assume everything they ask for has been rendered incomprehensible in a game of Telephone, either with other people or with themselves. In public policy they call it, "Something must be done, this is 'something', so we must do it."

Neal Gaiman did a compendium of Norse Mythology, and in it he claims that Thor says, "When something weird happens I always assume Loki is involved. It saves time." That's the line that stuck with me the most out of that entire book.

The people who fall into this category will tune you out while you say over and over "this is going to hurt us next year" and come in with a Pikachu face a year from now when they find out that it's been a year and the chickens have come home to roost.

People, as it turns out, are much more accepting of a team delivering consistently 10% slower than expected versus a team that delivers to expectations one year and suddenly drops by 50% a year later. They can't understand that. They can't predict it. It just looks to them like you've stopped doing what you are paid to do, rather than the truth which is you stopped doing what you were paid to do 2 years ago and you didn't jump ship before the consequences showed up.