>You don't go into a meeting like that to present problems, but to present solutions...it doesn't matter if you're right, it matters how you communicate and str

>You don't go into a meeting like that to present problems, but to present solutions...it doesn't matter if you're right, it matters how you communicate and strategize. I agree, I think the author misread what their role was. It wasn't to "tell it to them straight" as much as it was to solve a problem. Acknowledging the issue is only the first step. I once worked as an energy manager for a large financial institution. They had invested a lot of money into a complicated software system that promised to optimize all of their HVAC costs related to their data centers. The problem was the system didn't work well. At all. It used a complicated computational fluid dynamics model that took forever to build and any hiccup in the data would cause the system to start again from scratch. The engineers hated it so much they would just unplug it on the sly. It wasn't delivering on its promise to meet the sustainability goals as everyone thought it would. I didn't feel comfortable wasting the company's money on this system, but they thought it was great. There were plenty of vice presidents and managers up the line who vouched for it and it would make them look bad to say the system didn't work. We had to figure out a way to break it to them while allowing them to save face. So we went to work on their building automation system, reprogramming everything to be as efficient as possible. Part of the plan was to create an "experiment" where we had to remove the computational fluid dynamics model for a time. You know, so we gauge the true impact of our reprogramming efforts ;-) The effort worked wonders, exceeding their energy and sustainability goals set by the shareholders. We reframed it as "this worked so well that we think we can continue to meet sustainability targets without the computational fluid dynamics software contract." They were thrilled. Not only did they meet the goals, they saved money by getting out of the contract. It turned a bitter pill into a sweet one. Yes, I felt a duty to get them out of the contract that wasn't working. But getting them to accept that is a lot easier if you offer up a solution instead of just underscoring the problem.