YOU must have heard the joke about a consultant being a person who takes your watch to tell you the time? What he did was tell you it was 9 pm, while you had been working comfortably under the impression that it was still early morning.

In much the same way, has it ever happened that you had no inkling of an approaching disaster till you were hit? Even as others knew. Usually this occurs because the bearer of the bad news gets shot somewhere along the way. And nobody else is willing to suffer his fate.

By the time the information gets to the top, it is often diluted to suit the 'sensibilities' of the senior management. The things they would rather not hear are filtered as they move upwards through the hierarchy. If the senior management likes to hear only the good news, that is what they get.

But why bother with wanting to hear the bad news in the first place? That's simply because the earlier you know about things being wrong somewhere in the organisation, the possibilities of saving the situation are more -- and with far less drastic course correction.

What would you prefer? Getting to know about the spark, or being shaken up from deep slumber in the middle of the night with news that the house is on fire and that you need to move fast to avoid becoming roast meat?

The culprit, it seems, is the middle manager who deliberately hides things from the top brass. Because he feels the need to protect the brass from the bad news. Or, could it be because he knows that if he tells the truth, though he is only the messenger, he would bear the brunt of the boss's 'first reaction'?

Subordinates must not hide things from their bosses. After all, all they need is to be masochistic or suicidal! They are good. They are smart. But definitely, not stupid. They'll do what they are rewarded for, not punished for. But even while there are no organisations that encourage blocking of the bad news, it happens everywhere. To know if your organisation is also affected, you only need to ask three questions:

• Ask your employees: "Do you usually operate in a 'Cover Your Backside' mode?",
  
  
• Do you have a policy and corresponding systems to ensure bad news travels upward? Do you have systems that are followed and religiously reviewed for adherence?
  
  
• Finally, the most important question, do senior leaders make an everyday effort to encourage this flow ?
  

If the answer to any of these questions is no, the chances are bad news is not getting through.
Getting bad news is one thing. The acid test is, acting upon it. Apathy sets in when people don't see credible action to control the situation. You only need to ignore the news once, and you are not likely to get the advance warning of a crisis again.

To put things in perspective, being open to bad news does not spell the end of accountability. When required, heads must roll. But the heads must be the ones of those who were negligent in the first place or the ones who kept quiet. Definitely not the ones who were merely the messengers.

Too much of a good thing can also be bad. So is the case with keeping feedback channels open. It can lead to politicking, where people spend most of their time telling the boss about where others are going wrong. Senior managers can use this as an opportunity to define the rules of the game.

Mistakes will happen. So will crises. But the chances of unpleasant surprises reduce dramatically if the organisation encourages the vertical movement of bad news. It also helps the senior management get a far better picture, faster.

Getting back to the joke, there are two ways of looking at things. The way they are, or the way we would like to believe they are. A good consultant helps you do the former. He tells you the correct time, and not the time you thought it was. The chances of knowing the ground realities improve when a messenger is treated like one. Please shoot him so that I continue to earn a living.

Mohit Malik heads the Strategy and Leadership Practice at Anoova Consulting. The views expressed in this column are his own. He can be reached at mohit.malik@AnoovaConsulting.Biz.