Dear Bob ...From your most recent column ("More bridge lessons," Keep the Joint Running, 8/25/2007): <snip>Here's why it's relevant. Your job isn't to be right about all of this, then to say I-told-you-so when something goes wrong.It's to establish strong enough working relationships throughout the business to be persuasive, to communicate risk and its consequences accurately enough to prevent its turning Dear Bob …From your most recent column (“More bridge lessons,” Keep the Joint Running, 8/25/2007): Here’s why it’s relevant. Your job isn’t to be right about all of this, then to say I-told-you-so when something goes wrong. It’s to establish strong enough working relationships throughout the business to be persuasive, to communicate risk and its consequences accurately enough to prevent its turning into reality. Much harder. What does one do when they are the lowest level person in the organization, and the warnings fall on deaf ears? I was the schlub hired to restore the fallen servers, and do the cut-overs on the weekends. A full blown analysis complete with evidence take from the Manufacturer (the bozos who just changed their ticker symbol) and LOTS of rants from admins across the world, resulted in nothing. I decided to cut and run. Maybe a career killer, but my health was more important to me than the family’s earnings. Was there a better way? – I told them so Dear Teller … What should you have done? Without more detail it’s hard to say. In general, the right answer is, your job … which includes making sure your boss and your boss’s boss are informed regarding root causes and future risks. Once you’ve informed them, as it appears you did, your responsibility is to continue to do whatever work is assigned to you and to do it well. That leaves out a common scenario, which is that you continue to be scapegoated for every server failure even after you’ve explained what needs to be done to prevent recurrences. That happens a lot in corporate America. Under those circumstances you have these choices: Inform your boss’s boss’s boss, letting your boss and your boss’s boss know you’re doing so. This is the honorable course of action. Usually, it’s also career suicide. Choose this course of action if your assessment of the character of each of the three individuals says they’ll take it positively.Make use of your company’s open door policy to inform your boss’s boss’s boss without informing the rest of the chain of command. If that individual is politically savvy, he/she will create a situation where you can provide the right information publicly without doing yourself damage.Do your job, accept the scapegoating, and develop a thick skin.Find a better job in a company that would rather fix problems than assign blame.If I were a bookie, I’d give the best odds to the last option. – Bob Powered by ScribeFire. Technology Industry