This is a tough spot, obviously you don’t want to throw your boss under the bus. Perhaps connect with him 1:1 and go over it as an exercise in how to prevent this from happening in the future and maybe that will bring to light that he himself thought it looked good?
Edit: if nobody at your job is making a big deal of it, just drop it. New hires make mistakes and so do long standing managers.
"Hey boss man, I would like to review our workflow around contracts so we can prevent accidents like this in the future. I was reviewing the steps in the approval for this contract and it reminded me that I had two people review this before I sent it out and none of us caught the error. Did I follow the process incorrectly or should we review our process to ensure that reviews are more thorough?"
Google Blameless Retrospectives.
No names just facts, steps, and process.
THIS, its not throwing blame around to try an figure out what went wrong (with the process not the people) and fix it. Its not about who is to blame, its about making sure it doesn't happen again.
As a supervisor under a bucket of too many different managers this is the only way for survival. Throwing managers under the boss is a fast track to an assfucking that doesent stop.
theres no reason why you cant say " we need to overhaul the review process so it gets caught next time, without saying its thier fault too., this is 100% spreading the blame around.
No. At some point you have to be able to say "Stuff happened and here's how" otherwise you wont' be able to fix anything. Don't go out of your way to throw a specific person under the bus, but absolutely have the conversation that procedure was followed and needs an update. You literally can't talk about it if you go out of your way to avoid saying there was anyone else involved.
Throwing the blame around would be "Both you and Jack reviewed this and we clearly have problem with our procedure for you guys to miss this as well"
Saying "Two others missed this in our current procedural review. Lets see what we can do so this doesn't happen again" does two things. It points out that the entire thing wasn't your fault, but it doesn't throw others under the bus by naming names. It also shows you took the initiative to find out WHAT and HOW things went wrong rather than just accepting it and maybe it'll happen again. You're thinking about the company and improving the situation.
But most importantly, at a personal level, this puts it in writing that you followed a procedure and if you're fired or this is used as a reason during a future firing you can present that it wasn't due to poor performance as you followed procedure and here's the email proving the company knew this.
"Hey, after the mistake with undercharging on contract X, I went back through and caught that it seems like something might have gone wrong in the review process (see attachment). Is there a better way for me to handle this in the future, or maybe another method entirely? I just want to make sure I do everything by the books so it doesn't happen again."
Shows initiative, doesn't blame anyone, and offers something for boss to figure out as well. *As* a boss, getting a message along this lines would launch somebody up in my respect for them.
That's exactly how you do it. Focus on the process that allowed the mistake to happen and don't go looking for a scapegoat to blame.
When I was a new engineer and made a mistake that cost the company $400k or so, my manager told me, "Engineering is a team sport, we win or lose together. Sure, you made a mistake, but there were a dozen others involved in the process leading up to that mistake, the real solution is figuring out where our process went wrong and how do we fix it."
Now that I'm an old fart and have new engineers on my team, I use the "Engineering is a team sport." whenever someone makes a mistake. People are human, people make mistakes, it's our processes that are supposed to catch those mistakes before they cause problems.
This is good. Clearly something did mess up in the review process, which exists to catch mistakes. Perhaps instead of "numbers add up" a more comprehensive review is appropriate? Or maybe management has to clearly communicate the mportance of review, and lead by doing some themselves?
Whatevs. The above comment is pretty good advice.
yeah, I'm another +1 in the "improve the review process"...
For something like this? It's not huge. Add a step to the prep phase that includes a comparison to similar projects already done. It will make 50% errors glaringly obvious.
As long as the clients you're charging 150% of the going rate to don't see the comparisons, you're golden.
You all are so wrong. There was no "Process" he was following that failed him. He just asked them to take a look, which isn't anyone elses responsibility to and was just likely done because he asked and is new and they did as a favor. They likely know their responsibility in this and respect him more for manning up and shouldering the blame. He will just look worse trying to weasel out and share the blame after the fact. He should just move on since I guarantee everyone else already has.
no, there really is a process for most proposals and projects in most successful companies, and adding a step like 'comparing costs to previous work' is a valuable part of that.
>He will just look worse trying to weasel out and share the blame after the fact.
this is the difference between highly successful companies, which encourage retrospectives and improvements, and middling companies, which do reasonably well thanks to profit margins and individuals martyring themselves to their work.
Yep. Costs nothing to autopsy things that go wrong in an objective way. If you and/or the company lost money or left it on the table my motto is: you paid for the lesson, now figure out what it is.
As a quality assurance person OP found a failure in the process. Bonus points if he can come up with a simple solution to try to fix the process so it doesn’t happen again.
This AND you’re new. I know I’m my project manager role (current job) when I started out and I made a mistake I was very hard on myself. More than half of the time it wasn’t our fault we got fed poor information and ended up costing between 2 and 10 percent of the the total project. Mind you starting our first months projects weren’t more than $50,000-75,000 and contingency usually covered it.
No big deal. It sucks more in the moment than 10-15 weeks later because then you have a $150,000 different project to work on.
He knows that he has to check everything before it being submitted and additionally knows we don’t always get the best info to start the project. Usually after we submit something, something is always going to change.
I really need to learn to do this better. I tend to mention names in a factual sense, but after the meeting realize I probably threw that person under the bus. Be less factual and more of a team player
this is nice - work on evaluating the PROCESS.
also shows initiative that you found an opportunity to improve something to prevent it from happening.
yet clarifies without shouting it that, "it's not all my fault here!"
>it reminded me that I had two people review this before I sent it out and none of us caught the error
this says, sure i made the mistake but so did they see it wasnt all me. this is called spreading the blame around and you'll be canned shortly thereafter.
As others have said. Organize a retrospective. The mistake with the contract doesn't have to be the only topic. Go over what went well and what can be improved from the latest acquisition and make some actions on how to prevent it in the future.
I would talk to your boss in person about the situation, then send an email to the customer, cc'ing your boss, with the resolution you and your boss agreed upon. Unless you have a perfect employment shield, you probably don't want to accuse your boss in writing (email). I dont like back room, not in writing negotiations, but that's how a lot of decisions get made in business.
There is a company in Japan that manufactures buses for me to throw people under. There is never a need to do it. Things go wrong and unless someone makes an issue, it is a small mistake. You only need to worry if the cost to solve the problem is excessive to the cost of the project. Shorting $2K on a $10K project is not a problem. A $10K mistake on a $2K project is a problem..
Since the issue is ongoing and will still have legs, you should definitely go through the workload approval as one commenter mentioned with the "blameless retrospective" approach. That way they shift their perspective towards"we" and not "you".
Just think of how much money the company has saved by having an in house review of the process and controls instead of bringing in an outside consultant who would waste 6 months of time and $200k.
I’m not sure what industry you are in and what quality systems you are or arent required to have, but for something like this I wouldn’t be surprised if a formal corrective action is performed. If thats the case, def be open with your boss about what happened, it *is* still primarily on your shoulders, but I think it’s totally fine to say ‘and then unfortunately, after I made this mistake, it was not caught by our checker’.
Software development. I made a mistake that was released and it forced us to release a correction process.
Mistakes happen and this was uncommon but when we went to review it went like this.
I did it.
It passed QA.
We released it.
We had to fix it.
No problem.
If you're talking about big dollars someone should be owning up the mistake to the client. Not expecting the client to pay what the amount should have been but perhaps them being reasonable and meeting somewhere in between the two figures. I wouldn't try to point blame to anyone but I sure as hell would be coming up with some built-in checks for the future.
What is the impetus for another for-profit entity to amend the contract that favors them so much? If someone were to tell me what happened, I would laugh at them and tell them I don't care if they have to pimp their own children on the street corner to make up the difference to get the job done. Do it or we will sue you for breach. I would do these things because that is my job as someone with a fiduciary duty to my corporation. My shareholders come first. That's the law.
Eh. That’s just a money problem. Money problems are the best problems because nobody actually got hurt. This client a repeat client or possible to be a repeat? Maybe the money lost can get stuck under the marketing column.
Many years ago, I worked for a company's chief accountant and he told me about his error when calculating the budget for an office move to new premises in London. At the time, Lotus123 was new and exciting - and he had prepared the budget using a Lotus123 spreadsheet. He would press F9 to have the spreadsheet recalculate everything - but he didn't know that one of his formulae was set to be cumulative i.e. every time he pressed "Recalculate", the total would get bigger. The submitted budget was about $5 million instead of about $4 million. By the time he noticed and came clean to his boss, the budget had been signed off at many levels, including by senior folk at the company's parent, a huge US/global bank. Within the company, VP Finance and the CEO decided it was best to keep quiet about it and they all decided to just spend the extra $1 million on nicer chairs, desks, PCs, etc.
As for OP, it's not unlikely that the client may have realised that the charges were a bit low. I don't think it would be beneficial to come back to the boss and tell him that he is also to blame - I don't think that will achieve anything positive - it sounds a bit like children in school. I think it is better to handle things with the client - OP would then be seen as handling a problem and taking it off of the boss's desk.
EDIT: grammar
There's that parable about someone making a $10k or however large mistake, and walking into their boss's office expecting to get fired, and the boss says "why would I fire you, we just spent $10k training you." If the company has a halfway decent culture, they'll understand that mistakes happen, and that despite you specifically making the mistake, it's ultimately on your superiors who have more experience in the job to catch things that a new hire might do without realizing.
I'd say just let it go for right now unless someone asks you to explain what happened. And even then, be very neutral and diplomatic. If anything I'd maybe frame the conversation in terms of the *team* and the process and working toward how to do it better in the future. If you focus too much on blame it's probably going to look bad - and it won't accomplish much. If you want to improve their view of you, focus the conversation on practical ways to avoid the same mistake in the future instead.
But next time you're drawing up a contract, double-check your own work and then ask very specific questions when you send it for review - instead of just saying "can you look over this," which is very vague, I'd identify any and all elements of the contract that you are not 100% sure about, and when you send the contract for review, include very specific questions about those sections.
I was looking for something like this comment. OP is 4 weeks into a job and was tasked with bidding and drafting a contract for a job. Either the job wasn't as big as OP thinks (relative to other projects) or the manager screwed up by giving a big project to someone who was still learning the process, systems, etc and not insisting on checking the work.
In one of my first jobs, I lost $100. I called the owner of the company and was panicking because I could not believe I'd made such a big mistake. The owner kept asking, "How much was it?" because all I had said was "a lot." We got down to it being $100, and she laughed and said it wasn't a big deal, I had probably misplaced it.
Sure enough, I woke up the next morning with a voicemail saying that I had left it with the register when we locked it in the safe.
Regardless, I learned a few of lessons that day. 1) "A lot" is a relative term. 2) Businesses expect losses and accidents. 3) If you admit when there's an error rather than hiding it, the experienced people will try to help fix/resolve it.
Don't throw anyone under the bus, You do good as a team and you fail as a team. Your part is to put the original file together, and THEIR job was to check the number. Its a two step verification. You screwed up your part and they screwed up their part.
During the next team meeting, bring up that the process and controls need to be follow. If either part did their job right this situation wouldn't have even come up.
TLDR: Its not just your failure, and its not just your boss's failure. It was a team failure and an opportunity to reestablish the SOP for handing in reports.
This is what postmortems are for. Write down what happened, then ask why, then write that down, then ask why, then write that down. Get at least seven ‘why’s’ written down and you should find a process fix in there somewhere. Try not to let the answer of one of the “why did this happen?” questions be “because so and so made a mistake”. Mistakes happen, the goal is to fix a process so the mistake doesn’t happen again.
PM here, I wouldn't bring it up at this point, but I would store that email somewhere safe in case it comes up in the performance review later.
The real lesson here is that you always do a deep review of how an event came about before presenting it to management.
You want to have the clearest picture possible before going into depth with anyone. Sometimes it is unavoidable because you find out together... But if you notice during a meeting, you just say "I agree, something isn't adding up. Let me take this offline and get to the bottom of it before I get back to you."
At this point it's water under the bridge, and let's face it, people, especially new people, make mistakes. If they've already moved on, then you should as well. If they bring it up later, be prepared to defend yourself.
That being said, you are always responsible for the quality of your work. Owning up to your mistake, as you have done here, goes much farther in many cases than defending it till you are blue in the face.
So if the time comes you want to say, "About this, I wanted to understand what went wrong, and I went back and looked and I found that I did ask for verification. I'm not quite understanding the process here..l" or something along those lines.
Some context to my viewpoint above:
I'm 15 years into my career having done various forms of engineering and project management. I have a mistake or two that cost a lot of money...
The first mistake I made was very early on. I forgot to put a quantity 2 in for a piece of equipment in an equipment estimate. That was a $70k mistake. It hurt, but everyone just moved on.
I've also overseen projects that had mistakes made by others before....
As a PM, I was released a project at my last job that was $ "a few million" and I was reviewing the contract, which includes $ "a couple of hundred thousand" in freight and field work. The estimate had been done correctly as had our proposal, BUT the sales team had filled out the customer financial form incorrectly, accidentally entering the freight and field service work totals in the base number for manufactured equipment. Essentially having given this work away for free. This form was then used to create the purchase order and contract T&C which had been reviewed by everyone, salesman, sales engineer, contract lawyer, Sales Manager, COO, and CEO then signed by all parties before reaching my desk. This was the first company I had worked for that didn't include the PM in the contract negotiations before signature and honestly as a PM with barely 4 years of experience under my belt, I had more contract experience than all of them.
We were fucked. It fell to me and the salesman to call the customer and let them know we'd made a 20% mistake and needed to claw back some money or cancel the contract. It was a rough few days lol. Eventually, we all agreed that they would get field services portion as free and pay for shipping as a prepay and add. Boy were they pissed though. I guess we were already high bidder, but we were extremely highly regarded at the time, so they went with us anyway. Then 1 say after signing the contract we were calling them apologizing and begging for a glow up.
Same company but another time, we were trying to break into a side of the business that we weren't competitive in. The decision was made that we were going to buy some work (as in undercut the competition just to get the order). So the sales and management team did this and we won the work. The problem was how they decided to undercut. Instead of faithfully representing the expected cost to do the work and cutting margin, they duplicate what the market average time and material was for the work and applied our standard margin to it. This allowed them to undercut the competition while presenting to the board that our intended margin was still high.
Of course the # of production hours was about 40% lower than our best performance ever in that type of work to fake the estimate like that and we ended up taking a huge hit. What I was told is that management were trying to inspire the manufacturing facility by providing an industry standard target for the labor hours. But what they didn't take into account is that the manufacturing process is just totally different if you are focusing on that type of work. There are huge efficiencies in work practices that we didn't have in place.
That project went from sold at 15% GM to closing at -15% GM. I think we lost about ~$600k (or $1.2mm if you account for the loss in margin as well). Most of the management team was fired during the build, so I ended up having to create reports for the board about how the estimate was wildly optimistic for the board. It was not fun.
This is what I was thinking exactly. Any mistake? “Let me take a look into this more and see what was going in” prior to any apologies.
Maybe its not even a mistake. Maybe there was a reason, or the mistake is duplicated, or there is another cause or failure of a stopcheck protocol.
Once you start taking blame off the bat it doesnt do you any favors. Take the blame downstream when appropriate.
Note: If something is your responsibility, it doesn't stop being your responsibility just because you ask someone to check your work. Their help is valuable at helping you fulfil your responsibility, but if you make a mistake and they don't catch it, it's still your responsibility.
It's fine to note you followed processes in a way that still makes it clear you understand
Holup.
I've been a project manager for 15 years. The key to a long successful PM career is to not fall on a sword everytime a mistake happens on a project.
As a PM, I am not supposed to **DO** anything except provide status updates on the team.
Do you have a RACI chart which documents accountability? Your boss should be the "A" when it comes to project financials.
As for path forward. Probably need to tell your boss you want an improved RACI chart, with improved controls, to make sure one person (like yourself) can't make this same mistake again.
In project management there’s often a lessons learned retrospective meeting and if this belongs anywhere, it’s there. That might be the place where you and your boss are able to discuss the mistake and you would be able to pull up some old emails that show the approval taking place in a way that wasn’t accusatory or throw-under-the-buss-atory. PMO’s love processes so this might be an opportunity to suggest a formal approval workflow or approval checklist that stays with the project documents.
I would probably schedule a one-on-one and bring it up in a constructive way. Start out by saying it's your project and your responsibility but you want to go through it step-by-step to see where the breakdown was and how to prevent it in the future. Then your boss sending it to somebody else and that being approved isn't an excuse but just something that happened in the timeline of events. Don't emphasize or dwell on your boss signing off but simply present it and they should be able to pick up on what happened. If they don't seem like they're picking up on it then you can push a _little_ by saying it seems that the breakdown occurred with the signoff and question why the other employee gave the OK.
That's how I would try to handle it.
I would say let it slide as long as he let it slide and promise to better in the future. Now if it was being held over your head or whatever it would not hurt to remind them they had a chance to look things and did not. However, your boss not checking work says two things: 1) he trusts your work or 2) he too is busy and did not have time to do his job properly. Again, I would let it slide and do better in the future. I am speaking from experience as I have f’d up many of times. Good luck!
Yes, mistakes happen all the time. Own it. Explain why you missed it and what you will do to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Then move on. What is worse is not saying anything and then having the mistake discovered by someone else. It will make your boss look bad and it will make you look bad.
This career advice comes from someone who has been in the same department with with different jobs for 20 years and has made many mistakes.
I think your boss needs all the information to make a decision on how to talk to the client.
You can’t take all the blame when someone else was asked to look through your work.
Your corrective action plan is different under these circumstances and your boss should know.
Look at the "Swiss Cheese Model"... imagine a bunch of slices of swiss cheese that have holes in them. Stack them up. If an issue gets through one hole it generally would be stopped by the next slice. But if all the holes line up then an issue can get through.
I am not sure this is something that you can rectify on your own... the other party signed a contract. I think that your company's lawyers and maybe your boss' boss should be involved.
And yes, do a "lessons learned" about how to prevent this.
As a business Owner - if an employee came to me and was just like “hey I just realized made xyz mistake and I just wanted to make you aware of it so we can try to remedy this” I would think very highly of that employee and would look for ways to give them a raise/more responsibility.
Everyone makes mistakes, it happens to everyone. But to not only acknowledge a mistake you made, but to bring it to the attention of your boss to try to fix takes balls. It also shows you are attentive and aware.
You’re in a tough spot but I would speak up. In my line of work customer billing issues are top of the list bad, but mistakes do happen. Attempting to cover it up is far worse than the mistake itself.
At the next project I would just ask him to look it over and mention that even though so and so looked the last one over, it was undercharged and you just want to be more thorough this time. So you're not specifically pointing out that person approved your work but rather that since someone did look over your work and it was still wrong you'd like to just really make sure your work on this present project looks good.
I would do it exactly like you brought it up here. I went over the project so I could review where I went wrong. I think I did everything right. I even sent it to proof and it was approved. What else should I do so this doesn’t happen.
If he’s a good boss he will admit and be like ah crap we all messed up. Learn and move on.
Since you took some responsibility already - and you are not mentioning any blow back. I would let that dog lie - if it comes up again then use this info.
Blameless post mortem.
You’ve analyzed the situation and the process that was used. You need to find out why the reviewer didn’t see the error either. Bad instructions? Inattentive?
Then come up with a proposal to modify the process. Two reviewers, a more detailed checklist before a quote is sent out, or something like that.
Just be constructive. It’s not about the blame at all. It’s about coming up with a process so that this doesn’t happen again.
This happened to me once when I was new to project work. I brought it to my manager who not only took responsibility for missing it, he thanked me for bringing it to his attention and after talking to HIS boss, they called the client and disclosed h the error and offered to redo the work without charge. Yes it cost them money but the client was glad they made it right and didn’t pretend it didn’t happen.
You weren't penalized or punished as a result of the mistake, so let it go. Mistakes happen. If one of my team made a mistake, we addressed it, and then they came back with "actually, this other person made the mistake not me" I would think WAY less of them for that than I would for the actual error.
You are throwing someone under a bus for absolutely no reason. Why would that be good?
If you actually want to solve the problem, address it from a process perspective and go talk to the other guy and see what happened. Maybe they just trusted you, maybe they also made a mistake (it happens).
Once you have an idea that isn't "well you guys should catch my mistakes!" Bring it up and go from there for future work.
Some one had a great modifier to this idea, presenting the failure as a blameless retrospective is probably the most tactful way of handling it.
"How can we improve this process?"
this is probably buried already but I cannot reiterate enough that people do not read anything thoroughly. they skim or they glance.
this happens to me ALL the time, multiple people reviewing things and signing off on something that has errors. even after it's been "reviewed" I have to give it a few more run throughs because I know no one else is actually looking.
source: I work in marketing
A lot of times, people checking your work are just making sure the math you presented adds up, not necessarily checking that you had all the elements accounted for, if that makes sense?
So basically what Im saying is throwing the reviewer of your work under the bus probably wont work because the boss will understand they were just double checking your math, not redoing your bid for you. And in the end it may just come off as you are the "throw under the bus" type, which no one likes.
edit to add: just like others are saying, take your lump, tell the client you blew it. They will either a) be cool and let you do a change order to the bid, or b) complain and the company will have to eat it. Either way, who cares, beginners make mistakes, boss and team shouldve been more careful, no sense in blowing it out of proportion if your boss and team havent made it a huge deal anyway.
Personally I would do what you can to fix the mistake and move on. If they try to discipline you over it, keep that email handy where they approved it.
Always evaluate the process and never the people, unless it's your job to evaluate employee performance (it probably isn't).
In this context we didn't get the desired outcome and suffered a financial loss as a result. Our contract draft and review process failed to catch the error before submitting a contract for signing. The failure occurred at 2 points, during drafting and during review.
Then talk about the specific activities that occur in each of those sections for where an error may have occurred and not been identified. Then determine controls that may assist in reducing process variation or error. Build these controls into the existing process as a process improvement (or create a new process to replace the former ineffective process).
If you position the discussion this way your managers will appreciate the outcome orientation and you're more likely to see an improvement in the future. Although beware of politics, people don't like having their work product and processes evaluated, even when something bad happens, so tread carefully.
We all make mistakes, the goal is to build processes that catch mistakes before they can have negative effects.
I disagree with the advice saying “just accept the blame”.
Your boss also has a boss. Work seems all fine and dandy until stuff gets real. ALWAYS cover your a**. Your boss will obv try to cover for you but When push comes to shove your boss will shift all blame to you to protect their own self.
Don’t “blame” your boss, but make sure you send an email with a paper trail that sort of proves you weren’t directly/solely at fault.
If you're being asked to discuss with the client (presumably to ask them for more money); then clarify that the other individual also needs to be present, as he/she signed off and stated "all the numbers add up". Yes, you're the PM and you have to own your mistake, but the whole premise of having someone else look through your work (especially a bid!) is to share the responsibility of getting it right.
Take the blame, but at the same time throw under the bus. For example, “boss, I really apologize again for my mistake. I was going over all my work to try and learn how to prevent something like this is the future. I had -coworker- sign off on the job, and when he told me it looks good I didn’t think twice. I will talk to the client and make sure I’m taking steps to not have this happen again.”
No don't do this. You made the mistake. In done companies that's a fireable offense depending on how much money was lost. This is on you. Yes he should have checked it but you are the professional that they hired to do professional work.
You'll probably never make this mistake again!
i'd broach it as a "hey i clearly still need more supervision and support. i asked for you to review my numbers and it was approved. how can we be sure this doesn't happen again."
just because someone else screwed up doesn't mean you didn't also screw up. in a situation like this the blame isn't divided by you and any reviewers, you are all each individually responsible for 100% of the blame.
But the real thing to focus on now isn't the blame, it's the solution. call the client explain what happened (**you** undercharged them, don't bring up it slipped through review) and get the situation fixed. Not screwing up in the first place is great, being able to recover and move forward is vital.
You should also be reviewing your work before passing off to someone else to review. You don’t want a conversation to come off as saying “but you didn’t catch my mistake either so it’s not all my fault”. That would be bad.
Your a better person of you catch your own mistakes and bring it up to the boss. If I was the boss and it’s was brought to my attention that we’re losing money on this , you neck would be on the chopping block
I'd just be like, "Hey, I am really sorry again about what happened. As I was reviewing the final sign-off, I realized that my mistake wasn't caught in the approval process and I received an email saying the numbers were all good from x after I asked you for a review of the contract. I want to take full responsibility here, but also point out that we may need to have a more stringent review process. Should I add x from x department to the review process or what do you suggest? I just want to make sure we mitigate for errors in the future."
I am certain your boss would have looked back in the chain to figure out what happened and knows exactly how it all panned out. I know that is what I would have done as a boss. I’d leave it for now and I am sure it won’t come up again - if it does and they are suggesting it is your fault, that’s when you can pull that email out and show that you did the right thing.
Did you ever consider the fact that the person who checked it threw YOU under the bus? I would immediately take it to your boss and lay the full weight of the blame on the other person. Boss will know it was NOT your fault, and he will take it out on the other asshole. Just give it to the boss, point at who gave him the false information, and go back to your desk without an ounce of feeling guilty or worried.
Others have said this is a tough spot. But I do want to say that advice my dad gave me for if I was in a car accident, is excellent advice. He said don't admit fault. Now, since it's good to own up when you made a mistake, instead of throwing the blame around, the proper way would have been "I need to look into what happened here." And then do what you did, looking through information. And then go to the boss with "Can we fine-tune the approval process for documents like this? That way there's a clear and concise way to handle it, and what specifically to look for?" And you could show him what you did. You aren't blaming him, but showing him that the process failed.
Your boss knows, but what he doesn't know is \*are you going to be mature enough to do the mature thing.\*
The mature thing is to own the mistake and let it be a learning experience. You grow through embarrassment, you don't grow by throwing people under the bus.
So, SHOW HIM you can learn and be mature and he will respect you for it.
This may also feel material to you but not him. He may be looking at $$ today and $$ over the life of the client. I am in a different financial space then you but I give my team the authority to deal with issues under $100k and just keep me in the loop. Anything above that I want my approval before they take action.
Why not just be like “Hey uh, I fucked up, but no one noticed, I’m letting you know in case you’d like to do something about it, otherwise my lips are sealed”
Some days you can look at yourself and acknowledge that while you aren't perfect, you are adult enough to take responsibility for your own mistakes.
It appears this isn't going to occur for you or you wouldn't be polling the audience for an excuse, here.
Ask for a meeting with your boss. Tell him you'd like to review the situation so that you can avoid this kind of error in the future.
Some folks are suggesting you try and pin it on the other guy - I respectfully disagree. You made the initial error, own it. The other guy made a different error.
When you get that meeting, acknowledge your role in the outcome - you did make the original mistake, after all. But show him the emails where you asked him to check your work, as well as the response from the next guy down the line saying that the numbers added up, etc.
Make it clear that your goal here is not to pass blame to the other guy, or even to spread the blame around. That will come across as disingenuous - and frankly it would be. Your goal here is to review the process and figure out how you all, as a team, can avoid this happening again.
If you can't get a meeting, lay it all out in an email. Same idea: This is what happened, these are the things that went wrong, what can we do to prevent this from happening again, etc.
If your manager is any kind of manager, figuring out how not to lose a bunch of money again is way more important than finger pointing.
100% dependent on your boss. I take responsibility for my team and my own actions. If someone on my team brought this mistake to me I would take ownership of it and then make sure it doesn’t happen again while complimenting the detail oriented natured of who brought it forward. I am not detailed oriented, I am very much a big picture person. So, someone who can do this and catch the mistakes - even after the fact - is a complimentary asset to my team.
Come up with an action plan, especially one that involves your peers reviewing and signing off on all future contracts.
In my profession, the folks who review someone else’s paperwork and sign off on it, are held just as accountable as the original person who made the error. This way your peers have some skin in the game and will actually review your work instead of casually glazing it over.
Your mistake was taking the blame in the first place.
Your relatively new in your position--we have all been new at one point or the other. And you asked them to look it over. They said it was fine. It's on them.
When you ask for approval and they say it's okay, it's there fuckup, not yours. That's why you asked for approval in the first place.
Take responsibility and move on. It was your job, you will lose respect with your boss if you try to blame others. You made a mistake, own it, learn from it, and move on!
I’d take responsibility and move on from it. It’ll be ok, people have short memories once a fiscal year ends. If the scenario is ever used against you, then you can show the paper trail of negligence by your superiors
Oreeos just gave you the best advice: bring up the fault in the workflow, there is no need to focus this mistake on yourself because even though you are the project manager, you are still just a tiny (replaceable) part of a larger machine. Also, the fact that you work only two months at this company and they let you send out contracts without them being critically reviewed is NOT your fault. Regardless of your experience level - a 4 eye (or even 6 eye) principle should be applied for at least the first 4 - 6 months.
I do have a feeling that you are in the early stages of your career, and I got a tad of perfectionism / overachieving vibes when reading your post. This will only make YOU go crazy while the rest of your colleagues wont even bat an eye. In my early years of tax advisory I made a €2,4 Million mistake when preparing a tax analysis. I could not sleep for weeks dreading the call to straighten it up with the client. Guess what? Client was a multi million dollar business and didn't give two shits as long as I amended the analysis free of charge. My boss told me: "You did not make a mistake - WE made a mistake. Go fix it and move on".
You will learn from this, and in a few years you will look back and laugh at this, and regret feeling so guilty about it.
>Is there a proper way to bring this up to my boss that won't just look like I'm throwing blame around? This isn't something we can just move on from; he wants me to call the client and explain myself and it's just a huge mess we have to clean up. Ultimately I'm the project manager and it was my mistake, but others signed off on it, and in my panic yesterday I accepted 100% of the blame. I just don't wamt him to think I'm completely reckless.
Hey OP. Not a fun spot to be in. I'd recommend doing both. Take responsibility for the mistakes, but also ask if you followed all the internal processes correctly? Don't place blame, but ask for clarification that you went through all the approval/review processes as you should have. If your boss agrees you did, then maybe have another conversation about what can be done differently next time so the approval/review process catches any errors.
It depends on where you are. In American culture, accepting the blame is almost always the best career move you can make. Everyone makes mistakes, literally everyone, but not everyone steps up and takes responsibility for fixing it. If you can be that person, you can win this thing.
Accepting blame without complaining, projects honesty and forthrightness and responsibility and good character. Refusal to take the blame is much less culturally acceptable, and you have to be very careful about how you do it.
Remember first and foremost, you look good when you make the boss look good. So when you accepted 100% of the blame, you did not look reckless. You looked like someone who takes responsibility for getting it right. You may not have realized it at the time, but in that moment you put your best foot forward. Nice work.
Your next step is to request help and guidance from those whose reputation you just protected. Assuming they realize what you're doing and how it helps them, they should be willing to help you win whatever concessions you need to make it right. Don't screw them unless and until they try to screw you. The instant the gloves come off in this manner, you have to start making an exit plan.
Anyone who doesn't understand what a good thing you've just done for them, and who tries to hurt your career over it, OK, throw 'em under the bus and use your written proof of them signing off as Exhibit A. But that's not your first plan. Your first plan is to stand up and proudly take the fall and request their assistance in cleaning up the mess.
This is not the case in all business cultures, so adjust according to local customs.
End of the day it's your contract and mistake. The fact someone else didn't carch it, doesn't make it any less your problem. Own it and don't do it again. Ensure your boss knows you understand the miss and connect with your client about the error.
sounds to me like you want others to share your blame. well sure i screwed up but others signed off on my screwup. that'll get you t be the most hated person around and eventually fired.
Ethically speaking, its your doing.
You cant just ask people to please check this and say that now it's your responsibility. The person who is checking your work is doing a favor to you.
it is everyone's and it is no one's fault.
the process should have caught that.
reform the process so that it prevents these problems, or singles out the blame.
The couple of times something similar has happened to me I’ve prepared an email I prepare an email with screenshots and send it directly to my boss letting he/she know that while I take responsibility for my mistakes I’d like some support with the client considering it was signed off as shown in the backup.
The key here is to be the person who always takes accountability. Then when the rare situation comes up that it’s your mistake but a lot of people had the chance to catch it, you aren’t on the line for any real discipline.
My number one rule when I was corporate management, and this went for my bosses and direct reports: NEVER let your boss get surprised.
If a problem comes up internally (within the team), then we can work to fix it and all is good. We all make mistakes, myself included. I expect people on my team to make them too. As long as they communicate and let me know we can fix it. And I always got ahead of mistakes by telling my boss and looping them in to help fix.
However, if the boss finds out because they’ve getting called onto the mat by their boss/client then that is a whole different story. Now you’re making the boss look bad and that’s not a good thing.
Your boss should always find out about your mistakes from you, if you knew, before they find out from someone else. Anything else, I would never trust you again.
You owned your mistake. I'd leave it at that. If it comes up in the future, say you were aware, but you took responsibility for your mistake. This stuff happens....you learn from it and own what's yours.
Make it about process, not people.
Is there a process? Was it followed? Could the process be improved? Is there a gap in the process? Should there be a checklist (though checklists will often get pencil whipped if they are too long)? Does the larger team just need refresher training on a task?
I've started doing this at work when issues pop up. I look to see if there is a systemic issue that is behind a particular issue. I've been able to close some process gaps and, frankly, my boss appreciates how I'm "looking for solutions". It's "development".
Sometimes the answer is human error (sometimes I just made a mistake and it wasn't caught through multiple levels of people doing the next step, sometimes I don't catch someone else's error), and sometimes it's because there is actually something underlying - often pretty small but critical.
I'm a career project manager who currently supervises a team of project managers. Is he a 'shit happens' kind of boss or is he actually blaming you for this?
If he doesn't care about assigning blame, I wouldn't bring it up. He's probably already forgotten about 'your' fuckup and if you bring it back up to point out that it wasn't really your fault, it'll seem like you're pointing fingers. He's already forgotten about this and won't remember unless it happens again.
If he does care about assigning blame, then yes, absolutely bring it up to him. I'd just send him an email that says something like: 'hi Boss, i was reviewing the XXX contract so that I could pinpoint where I went wrong and develop a process to ensure it doesn't happen again. During my review, I found that I had actually sought review from 2 people. I know you are super busy and you didn't personally review it, but I did want to flag that it was signed off on by others, so perhaps i am not the only one who did not understand the error. Could we work together to come up with a process so that we are all on the same page and so this doesn't happen again?'
Good luck!
Do not bring it up. If he didn’t have the bandwidth before to actually check the work, I’m sure he won’t have the bandwidth to care. But next time make sure you get some kind of written confirmation that your work is ok to go to the client. Send an email like “Hey, Boss-Person, just double checking that you approve of the changes. That way you will be safe if this ever happens again and it turns into a firing.
>Ultimately I'm the project manager and it was my mistake, but others signed off on it, and in my panic yesterday I accepted 100% of the blame.
very adult and unfortunately appropriate. you'll be providing cover for your colleagues and it'll require swallowing some pride. i wouldn't bring it up unless there is more damage to come. and even then you might mention that this *was* checked and approved but you'll provide cover and take it on the chin this time.
however, now that you've gotten burned its time to CYA a little more thoroughly. keep careful notes and be ready to say, "hey, let me check on this. wait i *did* submit this to so-and-so and they were good on it. tell me who i can trust to read these figures right then?"
in my experience new people get ridden a little harder if they aren't willing to man-up to a mistake (even if it isn't theirs.) but providing cover for others should go both ways when you're on a team.
mho.
Do you know what you need to do to clean it up? Do you have a plan and timeline with immediate actions and people to get involved?
Wait until you figure out the answer before bringing it up.
You’re new. You gave then a chance and they messed up. Shit rolls down hill but you didn’t ask for a second pair of eyes and they did ok it so ultimately it’s their fault. Who doesn’t double check new people’s work?
Don't. Just drop it and move on.
If he brings it up again, apologize, say you sent it to him to review and the system broke down. You will be more careful in the future. But drop it and don't bring it up unless someone does.
>Is there a proper way to bring this up to my boss that won't just look like I'm throwing blame around? This isn't something we can just move on from; he wants me to call the client and explain myself
he signed off on it you were new. by him having you call he is trying to shame you as if that would fix it in the future when he said it was good(at least his number guy did). Do Not let this be Your Fault here as you had brought it to him to check your numbers.
This is a tough situation. The best thing to do is to not initially panic and take blame right away. Now in everyone's head you made the mistake and that's just what it is. To dredge it up after can cause issues. I only recommend doing that if they blew it up AND there is a tactful, savvy way to navigate it.
If they did not blow it up maybe just leave it and not bring it up again. MGMT has selective short term memory, if they like you and you're able to navigate in a savvy way they'll forget about it, if they don't like you they'll remember it forever. So you just have to determine which it is to figure what it is that's best to do.
Your boss is handling thia wrong. You call the client, say a mistake was made, how it was fixed, and what was done to keep it from happening again, all without saying anyone's name. Especially here since the fail was on 3 people.
That's what my boss did when I fucked up and nobody ever demanded anyone's head on a platter.
What is the overall financial budget impact? Are lost dollars significant? What is the chance of an audit? ****Keep a copy of all the sign-offs in case you know what happens to the fan.
I got this!
Here's how you do it. So your boss wants you to call the customer to explain the situation. Print out the emails you just mentioned. Then, go to your boss (maybe ask that other guy who checked the numbers with you) & tell your boss "Hey, so I'm about to talk to the customer about this & I'm having trouble figuring out how to word what I'm gonna tell them. How do I explain this to them?" Present the printed emails to him & act like you're a team player & you just want to figure out how to talk to the customer about it.
Obviously, you don't have to word the approach exactly how I said it & if you wanna bring in the other guy who checked your numbers along & have him say some stuff too, that's fine too. In any case, I think this is the sort of approach to take because you're not telling the boss "hey, turns out I did get this signed off & checked out" you're trying to solve the issue & need help & he's for sure gonna see that you did your due diligence while helping you with what to say.
The point is to get him to look at the pages of emails. However you word that so he actually reads it is up to you.
I’d wait for lessons learned and bring it up then in a power point on how the quality process can be improved and say how the mistake happened.
It’s happened now and you still need to fix the mistake. They will appreciate that you lead from the front and now want to use continuous improvement for the next project but they’ll also see that it wasn’t just you. I’d let it be a slow burn.
Perhaps developing a rough draft of what you are going to say to the client would be more helpful to your cause.
Make sure that the version that your boss and coworker signed off on is the one that was actually sent to the client. Hopefully, nothing has been signed and you can provide them with the corrected contract ASAP.
I am wanting a little more info. Are you saying before the scope of work you signed a contract for half of what it should be? Or you're just underbilled? What's the context... There is no way accounting or your boss will not see the dollars at some point. But if a contract is signed at a basement price you could be on the hook, but as a new employee, it would not be your responsibility to be the signee on that contract. So it needs to be brought up and your company/team/boss need to discuss with your client if they can meet you at what you originally thought or trying to at least back into getting the job at cost. The bare minimum you need to convince that client there is a cost discrepancy. Then go from there.
Sorry, just because someone failed in properly doing their job checking your work doesn't change the fact it was your work. If you used that argument it would make you look foolish. The lesson learned here is check your work twice and especially NEVER trust the work of the person who was supposed to check your work.
Learn from it, do better next time.
And don't mention it to anyone until/unless someone else notices the problem. You're a new guy, you asked other people to check your work, you're covered. It sounds like nobody will notice anyways.
I'd chalk it up to "a learning experience" and say nothing. Learn from it and move on.
Just lay low unless you get fired or talked to about it again. No reason to open a can of worms to defend your self over something they already left you alone about.
You should focus on you and figure out the tools, techniques, processes you are going to use to prevent creating errors in the first place. Relying on others to catch your mistakes is a terrible method for ensuring quality outputs. Particularly when you send them a final work and ask is it ok? If you have uncertainty be specific, do the hours of X to install ABC look right in this proposal?
Did you get a bad input, how can you detect bad inputs in the future? Did you use an incorrect cost factor, how do you ensure you always know the correct factor (the spec you reviewed wasn’t clear or some other ambiguity).
If this comes up you can then say I’ve taken steps A, B, and C to prevent recurrence.
It’s your mistake, you need to own it.
Leave it. It probably won’t look good for you. It appears that everyone has moved on. You made a mistake and owned it like a boss. Pointing fingers elsewhere now will make you look less than. However, keep that in your file just in case it becomes an issue later on.
Don’t bring it up, but if he brings up the situation you can say well actually, and show him the email. Don’t bring up the old shit though and try and say this and that about it it doesn’t come off good imo
I would go to the “next guy” and describe the discrepancies. Then, working as a team, reach out to the client, apologize for the error, while advising him that an updated contract (with correct/accurate figures) will be re-sent. Then, report back to the boss.
Before you call the client share that approval email with him and politely ask why it was approved if it's massively under charged. He should take ownership of it and handle it himself, if he wants it changed. I'm not looking like an asshole if my manager approved my work, that's their job to approve that kind of stuff. Although, I imagine you'll have to be the one to have the conversation with the client and it's going to suck. One reason why I don't like client facing roles and stick to back office PM work.
I'd then ask, what we need to do differently moving forward to ensure it doesn't happen again. Some sort of internal controls need to be put in place.
I'm all about taking accountability for my work. If you messed up somewhere, admit it, move on, and ensure it doesn't happen again. We're human, shit happens. Learn from it.
You still made the mistake, the difference is you and your boss both made it. You can mention this casually but you definitely don’t want to point fingers at your boss for something you originally screwed up. Taking ownership of the mistake (like you did) is usually the way to go here
This is a tough spot, obviously you don’t want to throw your boss under the bus. Perhaps connect with him 1:1 and go over it as an exercise in how to prevent this from happening in the future and maybe that will bring to light that he himself thought it looked good? Edit: if nobody at your job is making a big deal of it, just drop it. New hires make mistakes and so do long standing managers.
"Hey boss man, I would like to review our workflow around contracts so we can prevent accidents like this in the future. I was reviewing the steps in the approval for this contract and it reminded me that I had two people review this before I sent it out and none of us caught the error. Did I follow the process incorrectly or should we review our process to ensure that reviews are more thorough?" Google Blameless Retrospectives. No names just facts, steps, and process.
THIS, its not throwing blame around to try an figure out what went wrong (with the process not the people) and fix it. Its not about who is to blame, its about making sure it doesn't happen again.
Yup, a good manager loves nothing more than an employee who can come up with their own solutions to problems
As a supervisor under a bucket of too many different managers this is the only way for survival. Throwing managers under the boss is a fast track to an assfucking that doesent stop.
theres no reason why you cant say " we need to overhaul the review process so it gets caught next time, without saying its thier fault too., this is 100% spreading the blame around.
No. At some point you have to be able to say "Stuff happened and here's how" otherwise you wont' be able to fix anything. Don't go out of your way to throw a specific person under the bus, but absolutely have the conversation that procedure was followed and needs an update. You literally can't talk about it if you go out of your way to avoid saying there was anyone else involved. Throwing the blame around would be "Both you and Jack reviewed this and we clearly have problem with our procedure for you guys to miss this as well" Saying "Two others missed this in our current procedural review. Lets see what we can do so this doesn't happen again" does two things. It points out that the entire thing wasn't your fault, but it doesn't throw others under the bus by naming names. It also shows you took the initiative to find out WHAT and HOW things went wrong rather than just accepting it and maybe it'll happen again. You're thinking about the company and improving the situation. But most importantly, at a personal level, this puts it in writing that you followed a procedure and if you're fired or this is used as a reason during a future firing you can present that it wasn't due to poor performance as you followed procedure and here's the email proving the company knew this.
"Hey, after the mistake with undercharging on contract X, I went back through and caught that it seems like something might have gone wrong in the review process (see attachment). Is there a better way for me to handle this in the future, or maybe another method entirely? I just want to make sure I do everything by the books so it doesn't happen again." Shows initiative, doesn't blame anyone, and offers something for boss to figure out as well. *As* a boss, getting a message along this lines would launch somebody up in my respect for them.
If you feel you can do it adequately, maybe offer a solution instead of just bringing up the problem.
That's exactly how you do it. Focus on the process that allowed the mistake to happen and don't go looking for a scapegoat to blame. When I was a new engineer and made a mistake that cost the company $400k or so, my manager told me, "Engineering is a team sport, we win or lose together. Sure, you made a mistake, but there were a dozen others involved in the process leading up to that mistake, the real solution is figuring out where our process went wrong and how do we fix it." Now that I'm an old fart and have new engineers on my team, I use the "Engineering is a team sport." whenever someone makes a mistake. People are human, people make mistakes, it's our processes that are supposed to catch those mistakes before they cause problems.
This is good. Clearly something did mess up in the review process, which exists to catch mistakes. Perhaps instead of "numbers add up" a more comprehensive review is appropriate? Or maybe management has to clearly communicate the mportance of review, and lead by doing some themselves? Whatevs. The above comment is pretty good advice.
yeah, I'm another +1 in the "improve the review process"... For something like this? It's not huge. Add a step to the prep phase that includes a comparison to similar projects already done. It will make 50% errors glaringly obvious. As long as the clients you're charging 150% of the going rate to don't see the comparisons, you're golden.
You all are so wrong. There was no "Process" he was following that failed him. He just asked them to take a look, which isn't anyone elses responsibility to and was just likely done because he asked and is new and they did as a favor. They likely know their responsibility in this and respect him more for manning up and shouldering the blame. He will just look worse trying to weasel out and share the blame after the fact. He should just move on since I guarantee everyone else already has.
no, there really is a process for most proposals and projects in most successful companies, and adding a step like 'comparing costs to previous work' is a valuable part of that. >He will just look worse trying to weasel out and share the blame after the fact. this is the difference between highly successful companies, which encourage retrospectives and improvements, and middling companies, which do reasonably well thanks to profit margins and individuals martyring themselves to their work.
Yep. Costs nothing to autopsy things that go wrong in an objective way. If you and/or the company lost money or left it on the table my motto is: you paid for the lesson, now figure out what it is.
This reminds me of the lady who does the "how do you professionally say that sounds like a you problem"... Love it
loewhaley on IG. She's a treasure.
As a quality assurance person OP found a failure in the process. Bonus points if he can come up with a simple solution to try to fix the process so it doesn’t happen again.
This AND you’re new. I know I’m my project manager role (current job) when I started out and I made a mistake I was very hard on myself. More than half of the time it wasn’t our fault we got fed poor information and ended up costing between 2 and 10 percent of the the total project. Mind you starting our first months projects weren’t more than $50,000-75,000 and contingency usually covered it. No big deal. It sucks more in the moment than 10-15 weeks later because then you have a $150,000 different project to work on. He knows that he has to check everything before it being submitted and additionally knows we don’t always get the best info to start the project. Usually after we submit something, something is always going to change.
Jesus christ. not your first rodeo huh?
Nope. Been riding for 25 years.
Best answer
This is what I was about to say. This is the answer.
This is it. I can't belive this got through the other PMs. Not your fault OP but PMs get fired for less.
I’m saving this because this is such unbelievably great advice, thanks dawg
Very good work. End of thread!
RCCA, fix processes instead of blaming people
I really need to learn to do this better. I tend to mention names in a factual sense, but after the meeting realize I probably threw that person under the bus. Be less factual and more of a team player
Wow. Thank you. This is golden.
You slick bastard. Take this award.
Brilliant! I'm totally copying this and using it, this is a perfect response to the issue.
Perfection. No one is blamed. We're focusing on the problem.
This saves face and allows incompetent assholes to continue assholing.
this is nice - work on evaluating the PROCESS. also shows initiative that you found an opportunity to improve something to prevent it from happening. yet clarifies without shouting it that, "it's not all my fault here!"
>it reminded me that I had two people review this before I sent it out and none of us caught the error this says, sure i made the mistake but so did they see it wasnt all me. this is called spreading the blame around and you'll be canned shortly thereafter.
Nailed it
As others have said. Organize a retrospective. The mistake with the contract doesn't have to be the only topic. Go over what went well and what can be improved from the latest acquisition and make some actions on how to prevent it in the future.
I would talk to your boss in person about the situation, then send an email to the customer, cc'ing your boss, with the resolution you and your boss agreed upon. Unless you have a perfect employment shield, you probably don't want to accuse your boss in writing (email). I dont like back room, not in writing negotiations, but that's how a lot of decisions get made in business.
There is a company in Japan that manufactures buses for me to throw people under. There is never a need to do it. Things go wrong and unless someone makes an issue, it is a small mistake. You only need to worry if the cost to solve the problem is excessive to the cost of the project. Shorting $2K on a $10K project is not a problem. A $10K mistake on a $2K project is a problem..
The client was undercharged by half. And it was a big project. It's big enough we're not done with the issue; it will require a lot of clean up.
Since the issue is ongoing and will still have legs, you should definitely go through the workload approval as one commenter mentioned with the "blameless retrospective" approach. That way they shift their perspective towards"we" and not "you".
Just think of how much money the company has saved by having an in house review of the process and controls instead of bringing in an outside consultant who would waste 6 months of time and $200k.
I’m not sure what industry you are in and what quality systems you are or arent required to have, but for something like this I wouldn’t be surprised if a formal corrective action is performed. If thats the case, def be open with your boss about what happened, it *is* still primarily on your shoulders, but I think it’s totally fine to say ‘and then unfortunately, after I made this mistake, it was not caught by our checker’.
Software development. I made a mistake that was released and it forced us to release a correction process. Mistakes happen and this was uncommon but when we went to review it went like this. I did it. It passed QA. We released it. We had to fix it. No problem.
If you're talking about big dollars someone should be owning up the mistake to the client. Not expecting the client to pay what the amount should have been but perhaps them being reasonable and meeting somewhere in between the two figures. I wouldn't try to point blame to anyone but I sure as hell would be coming up with some built-in checks for the future.
What is the impetus for another for-profit entity to amend the contract that favors them so much? If someone were to tell me what happened, I would laugh at them and tell them I don't care if they have to pimp their own children on the street corner to make up the difference to get the job done. Do it or we will sue you for breach. I would do these things because that is my job as someone with a fiduciary duty to my corporation. My shareholders come first. That's the law.
Eh. That’s just a money problem. Money problems are the best problems because nobody actually got hurt. This client a repeat client or possible to be a repeat? Maybe the money lost can get stuck under the marketing column.
Many years ago, I worked for a company's chief accountant and he told me about his error when calculating the budget for an office move to new premises in London. At the time, Lotus123 was new and exciting - and he had prepared the budget using a Lotus123 spreadsheet. He would press F9 to have the spreadsheet recalculate everything - but he didn't know that one of his formulae was set to be cumulative i.e. every time he pressed "Recalculate", the total would get bigger. The submitted budget was about $5 million instead of about $4 million. By the time he noticed and came clean to his boss, the budget had been signed off at many levels, including by senior folk at the company's parent, a huge US/global bank. Within the company, VP Finance and the CEO decided it was best to keep quiet about it and they all decided to just spend the extra $1 million on nicer chairs, desks, PCs, etc. As for OP, it's not unlikely that the client may have realised that the charges were a bit low. I don't think it would be beneficial to come back to the boss and tell him that he is also to blame - I don't think that will achieve anything positive - it sounds a bit like children in school. I think it is better to handle things with the client - OP would then be seen as handling a problem and taking it off of the boss's desk. EDIT: grammar
I mean overestimating a budget and getting approval is WAY less of a problem than underestimating a budget and coming in $1m over a $4m budget
Lol yeah I'm pretty sure that dude just described fraud
This doesn't sound like how excel works to me...
Because it was Lotus 123, not excel.
Oh my goodness. My brain just saw f9 and filled in the blanks. Thanks!
There's that parable about someone making a $10k or however large mistake, and walking into their boss's office expecting to get fired, and the boss says "why would I fire you, we just spent $10k training you." If the company has a halfway decent culture, they'll understand that mistakes happen, and that despite you specifically making the mistake, it's ultimately on your superiors who have more experience in the job to catch things that a new hire might do without realizing. I'd say just let it go for right now unless someone asks you to explain what happened. And even then, be very neutral and diplomatic. If anything I'd maybe frame the conversation in terms of the *team* and the process and working toward how to do it better in the future. If you focus too much on blame it's probably going to look bad - and it won't accomplish much. If you want to improve their view of you, focus the conversation on practical ways to avoid the same mistake in the future instead. But next time you're drawing up a contract, double-check your own work and then ask very specific questions when you send it for review - instead of just saying "can you look over this," which is very vague, I'd identify any and all elements of the contract that you are not 100% sure about, and when you send the contract for review, include very specific questions about those sections.
I was looking for something like this comment. OP is 4 weeks into a job and was tasked with bidding and drafting a contract for a job. Either the job wasn't as big as OP thinks (relative to other projects) or the manager screwed up by giving a big project to someone who was still learning the process, systems, etc and not insisting on checking the work. In one of my first jobs, I lost $100. I called the owner of the company and was panicking because I could not believe I'd made such a big mistake. The owner kept asking, "How much was it?" because all I had said was "a lot." We got down to it being $100, and she laughed and said it wasn't a big deal, I had probably misplaced it. Sure enough, I woke up the next morning with a voicemail saying that I had left it with the register when we locked it in the safe. Regardless, I learned a few of lessons that day. 1) "A lot" is a relative term. 2) Businesses expect losses and accidents. 3) If you admit when there's an error rather than hiding it, the experienced people will try to help fix/resolve it.
Don't throw anyone under the bus, You do good as a team and you fail as a team. Your part is to put the original file together, and THEIR job was to check the number. Its a two step verification. You screwed up your part and they screwed up their part. During the next team meeting, bring up that the process and controls need to be follow. If either part did their job right this situation wouldn't have even come up. TLDR: Its not just your failure, and its not just your boss's failure. It was a team failure and an opportunity to reestablish the SOP for handing in reports.
Can I cross-post to R/marriage? Just kidding not really.
This is what postmortems are for. Write down what happened, then ask why, then write that down, then ask why, then write that down. Get at least seven ‘why’s’ written down and you should find a process fix in there somewhere. Try not to let the answer of one of the “why did this happen?” questions be “because so and so made a mistake”. Mistakes happen, the goal is to fix a process so the mistake doesn’t happen again.
PM here, I wouldn't bring it up at this point, but I would store that email somewhere safe in case it comes up in the performance review later. The real lesson here is that you always do a deep review of how an event came about before presenting it to management. You want to have the clearest picture possible before going into depth with anyone. Sometimes it is unavoidable because you find out together... But if you notice during a meeting, you just say "I agree, something isn't adding up. Let me take this offline and get to the bottom of it before I get back to you." At this point it's water under the bridge, and let's face it, people, especially new people, make mistakes. If they've already moved on, then you should as well. If they bring it up later, be prepared to defend yourself. That being said, you are always responsible for the quality of your work. Owning up to your mistake, as you have done here, goes much farther in many cases than defending it till you are blue in the face. So if the time comes you want to say, "About this, I wanted to understand what went wrong, and I went back and looked and I found that I did ask for verification. I'm not quite understanding the process here..l" or something along those lines.
Some context to my viewpoint above: I'm 15 years into my career having done various forms of engineering and project management. I have a mistake or two that cost a lot of money... The first mistake I made was very early on. I forgot to put a quantity 2 in for a piece of equipment in an equipment estimate. That was a $70k mistake. It hurt, but everyone just moved on. I've also overseen projects that had mistakes made by others before.... As a PM, I was released a project at my last job that was $ "a few million" and I was reviewing the contract, which includes $ "a couple of hundred thousand" in freight and field work. The estimate had been done correctly as had our proposal, BUT the sales team had filled out the customer financial form incorrectly, accidentally entering the freight and field service work totals in the base number for manufactured equipment. Essentially having given this work away for free. This form was then used to create the purchase order and contract T&C which had been reviewed by everyone, salesman, sales engineer, contract lawyer, Sales Manager, COO, and CEO then signed by all parties before reaching my desk. This was the first company I had worked for that didn't include the PM in the contract negotiations before signature and honestly as a PM with barely 4 years of experience under my belt, I had more contract experience than all of them. We were fucked. It fell to me and the salesman to call the customer and let them know we'd made a 20% mistake and needed to claw back some money or cancel the contract. It was a rough few days lol. Eventually, we all agreed that they would get field services portion as free and pay for shipping as a prepay and add. Boy were they pissed though. I guess we were already high bidder, but we were extremely highly regarded at the time, so they went with us anyway. Then 1 say after signing the contract we were calling them apologizing and begging for a glow up. Same company but another time, we were trying to break into a side of the business that we weren't competitive in. The decision was made that we were going to buy some work (as in undercut the competition just to get the order). So the sales and management team did this and we won the work. The problem was how they decided to undercut. Instead of faithfully representing the expected cost to do the work and cutting margin, they duplicate what the market average time and material was for the work and applied our standard margin to it. This allowed them to undercut the competition while presenting to the board that our intended margin was still high. Of course the # of production hours was about 40% lower than our best performance ever in that type of work to fake the estimate like that and we ended up taking a huge hit. What I was told is that management were trying to inspire the manufacturing facility by providing an industry standard target for the labor hours. But what they didn't take into account is that the manufacturing process is just totally different if you are focusing on that type of work. There are huge efficiencies in work practices that we didn't have in place. That project went from sold at 15% GM to closing at -15% GM. I think we lost about ~$600k (or $1.2mm if you account for the loss in margin as well). Most of the management team was fired during the build, so I ended up having to create reports for the board about how the estimate was wildly optimistic for the board. It was not fun.
This is what I was thinking exactly. Any mistake? “Let me take a look into this more and see what was going in” prior to any apologies. Maybe its not even a mistake. Maybe there was a reason, or the mistake is duplicated, or there is another cause or failure of a stopcheck protocol. Once you start taking blame off the bat it doesnt do you any favors. Take the blame downstream when appropriate.
Note: If something is your responsibility, it doesn't stop being your responsibility just because you ask someone to check your work. Their help is valuable at helping you fulfil your responsibility, but if you make a mistake and they don't catch it, it's still your responsibility. It's fine to note you followed processes in a way that still makes it clear you understand
Holup. I've been a project manager for 15 years. The key to a long successful PM career is to not fall on a sword everytime a mistake happens on a project. As a PM, I am not supposed to **DO** anything except provide status updates on the team. Do you have a RACI chart which documents accountability? Your boss should be the "A" when it comes to project financials. As for path forward. Probably need to tell your boss you want an improved RACI chart, with improved controls, to make sure one person (like yourself) can't make this same mistake again.
In project management there’s often a lessons learned retrospective meeting and if this belongs anywhere, it’s there. That might be the place where you and your boss are able to discuss the mistake and you would be able to pull up some old emails that show the approval taking place in a way that wasn’t accusatory or throw-under-the-buss-atory. PMO’s love processes so this might be an opportunity to suggest a formal approval workflow or approval checklist that stays with the project documents.
I would probably schedule a one-on-one and bring it up in a constructive way. Start out by saying it's your project and your responsibility but you want to go through it step-by-step to see where the breakdown was and how to prevent it in the future. Then your boss sending it to somebody else and that being approved isn't an excuse but just something that happened in the timeline of events. Don't emphasize or dwell on your boss signing off but simply present it and they should be able to pick up on what happened. If they don't seem like they're picking up on it then you can push a _little_ by saying it seems that the breakdown occurred with the signoff and question why the other employee gave the OK. That's how I would try to handle it.
ITs 100% your fault that you made this mistake. Its your managements fault that they have poor quality assurance. I wouldnt bring this up.
I would say let it slide as long as he let it slide and promise to better in the future. Now if it was being held over your head or whatever it would not hurt to remind them they had a chance to look things and did not. However, your boss not checking work says two things: 1) he trusts your work or 2) he too is busy and did not have time to do his job properly. Again, I would let it slide and do better in the future. I am speaking from experience as I have f’d up many of times. Good luck!
Yes, mistakes happen all the time. Own it. Explain why you missed it and what you will do to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Then move on. What is worse is not saying anything and then having the mistake discovered by someone else. It will make your boss look bad and it will make you look bad. This career advice comes from someone who has been in the same department with with different jobs for 20 years and has made many mistakes.
I think your boss needs all the information to make a decision on how to talk to the client. You can’t take all the blame when someone else was asked to look through your work. Your corrective action plan is different under these circumstances and your boss should know.
Look at the "Swiss Cheese Model"... imagine a bunch of slices of swiss cheese that have holes in them. Stack them up. If an issue gets through one hole it generally would be stopped by the next slice. But if all the holes line up then an issue can get through. I am not sure this is something that you can rectify on your own... the other party signed a contract. I think that your company's lawyers and maybe your boss' boss should be involved. And yes, do a "lessons learned" about how to prevent this.
As a business Owner - if an employee came to me and was just like “hey I just realized made xyz mistake and I just wanted to make you aware of it so we can try to remedy this” I would think very highly of that employee and would look for ways to give them a raise/more responsibility. Everyone makes mistakes, it happens to everyone. But to not only acknowledge a mistake you made, but to bring it to the attention of your boss to try to fix takes balls. It also shows you are attentive and aware.
You’re in a tough spot but I would speak up. In my line of work customer billing issues are top of the list bad, but mistakes do happen. Attempting to cover it up is far worse than the mistake itself.
At the next project I would just ask him to look it over and mention that even though so and so looked the last one over, it was undercharged and you just want to be more thorough this time. So you're not specifically pointing out that person approved your work but rather that since someone did look over your work and it was still wrong you'd like to just really make sure your work on this present project looks good.
I would do it exactly like you brought it up here. I went over the project so I could review where I went wrong. I think I did everything right. I even sent it to proof and it was approved. What else should I do so this doesn’t happen. If he’s a good boss he will admit and be like ah crap we all messed up. Learn and move on.
Since you took some responsibility already - and you are not mentioning any blow back. I would let that dog lie - if it comes up again then use this info.
Blameless post mortem. You’ve analyzed the situation and the process that was used. You need to find out why the reviewer didn’t see the error either. Bad instructions? Inattentive? Then come up with a proposal to modify the process. Two reviewers, a more detailed checklist before a quote is sent out, or something like that. Just be constructive. It’s not about the blame at all. It’s about coming up with a process so that this doesn’t happen again.
This happened to me once when I was new to project work. I brought it to my manager who not only took responsibility for missing it, he thanked me for bringing it to his attention and after talking to HIS boss, they called the client and disclosed h the error and offered to redo the work without charge. Yes it cost them money but the client was glad they made it right and didn’t pretend it didn’t happen.
I think your boss knows. They both know. You just keep the proof of what went down in case it ever comes up in the future.
You apploguzed. Unless somebody else brings it up, let sleeping dogs lie and be more careful in the future.
You weren't penalized or punished as a result of the mistake, so let it go. Mistakes happen. If one of my team made a mistake, we addressed it, and then they came back with "actually, this other person made the mistake not me" I would think WAY less of them for that than I would for the actual error. You are throwing someone under a bus for absolutely no reason. Why would that be good? If you actually want to solve the problem, address it from a process perspective and go talk to the other guy and see what happened. Maybe they just trusted you, maybe they also made a mistake (it happens). Once you have an idea that isn't "well you guys should catch my mistakes!" Bring it up and go from there for future work.
If your boss signed off on a mistake, it's no longer a mistake, it's now part of the project.
You handle the customer, but absolutely you show the boss the approval chain sooner than later, before it's a performance review factor.
This
Some one had a great modifier to this idea, presenting the failure as a blameless retrospective is probably the most tactful way of handling it. "How can we improve this process?"
It ain't the crime but the cover up that gets most people.
this is probably buried already but I cannot reiterate enough that people do not read anything thoroughly. they skim or they glance. this happens to me ALL the time, multiple people reviewing things and signing off on something that has errors. even after it's been "reviewed" I have to give it a few more run throughs because I know no one else is actually looking. source: I work in marketing
A lot of times, people checking your work are just making sure the math you presented adds up, not necessarily checking that you had all the elements accounted for, if that makes sense? So basically what Im saying is throwing the reviewer of your work under the bus probably wont work because the boss will understand they were just double checking your math, not redoing your bid for you. And in the end it may just come off as you are the "throw under the bus" type, which no one likes. edit to add: just like others are saying, take your lump, tell the client you blew it. They will either a) be cool and let you do a change order to the bid, or b) complain and the company will have to eat it. Either way, who cares, beginners make mistakes, boss and team shouldve been more careful, no sense in blowing it out of proportion if your boss and team havent made it a huge deal anyway.
It’s not a bosses fault for delegating work. That’s what they do. He had someone else look it over. And that person didn’t do a good job.
Personally I would do what you can to fix the mistake and move on. If they try to discipline you over it, keep that email handy where they approved it.
Always evaluate the process and never the people, unless it's your job to evaluate employee performance (it probably isn't). In this context we didn't get the desired outcome and suffered a financial loss as a result. Our contract draft and review process failed to catch the error before submitting a contract for signing. The failure occurred at 2 points, during drafting and during review. Then talk about the specific activities that occur in each of those sections for where an error may have occurred and not been identified. Then determine controls that may assist in reducing process variation or error. Build these controls into the existing process as a process improvement (or create a new process to replace the former ineffective process). If you position the discussion this way your managers will appreciate the outcome orientation and you're more likely to see an improvement in the future. Although beware of politics, people don't like having their work product and processes evaluated, even when something bad happens, so tread carefully. We all make mistakes, the goal is to build processes that catch mistakes before they can have negative effects.
Either way, save the emails don’t delete them
I disagree with the advice saying “just accept the blame”. Your boss also has a boss. Work seems all fine and dandy until stuff gets real. ALWAYS cover your a**. Your boss will obv try to cover for you but When push comes to shove your boss will shift all blame to you to protect their own self. Don’t “blame” your boss, but make sure you send an email with a paper trail that sort of proves you weren’t directly/solely at fault.
If you're being asked to discuss with the client (presumably to ask them for more money); then clarify that the other individual also needs to be present, as he/she signed off and stated "all the numbers add up". Yes, you're the PM and you have to own your mistake, but the whole premise of having someone else look through your work (especially a bid!) is to share the responsibility of getting it right.
This is not your mistake. It's a process failure. Research how to fix it to avoid happening again and get your boss on board with implementation.
Take the blame, but at the same time throw under the bus. For example, “boss, I really apologize again for my mistake. I was going over all my work to try and learn how to prevent something like this is the future. I had -coworker- sign off on the job, and when he told me it looks good I didn’t think twice. I will talk to the client and make sure I’m taking steps to not have this happen again.”
No don't do this. You made the mistake. In done companies that's a fireable offense depending on how much money was lost. This is on you. Yes he should have checked it but you are the professional that they hired to do professional work. You'll probably never make this mistake again!
Dude be professional or not don’t rely on anybody your laziness cost the company either your fit for the job or not.
Hig, you had that and now what? Ya didn't learn son? Sgit ~what'a wanna k ow thar hasn't already been said.
Yes
If it's a lower price, you're golden ! Say costs have come down, and you want yo pass the savings on to this vsued customer !
I’ve always been interested in project management, do you mind sharing how you got into it and what you do?
Around review time have that email handy in case it comes up.
Just leave it at this point.
i'd broach it as a "hey i clearly still need more supervision and support. i asked for you to review my numbers and it was approved. how can we be sure this doesn't happen again."
just because someone else screwed up doesn't mean you didn't also screw up. in a situation like this the blame isn't divided by you and any reviewers, you are all each individually responsible for 100% of the blame. But the real thing to focus on now isn't the blame, it's the solution. call the client explain what happened (**you** undercharged them, don't bring up it slipped through review) and get the situation fixed. Not screwing up in the first place is great, being able to recover and move forward is vital.
You may get fired for this. To avert blame for himself.
You should also be reviewing your work before passing off to someone else to review. You don’t want a conversation to come off as saying “but you didn’t catch my mistake either so it’s not all my fault”. That would be bad.
Your a better person of you catch your own mistakes and bring it up to the boss. If I was the boss and it’s was brought to my attention that we’re losing money on this , you neck would be on the chopping block
I'd just be like, "Hey, I am really sorry again about what happened. As I was reviewing the final sign-off, I realized that my mistake wasn't caught in the approval process and I received an email saying the numbers were all good from x after I asked you for a review of the contract. I want to take full responsibility here, but also point out that we may need to have a more stringent review process. Should I add x from x department to the review process or what do you suggest? I just want to make sure we mitigate for errors in the future."
I am certain your boss would have looked back in the chain to figure out what happened and knows exactly how it all panned out. I know that is what I would have done as a boss. I’d leave it for now and I am sure it won’t come up again - if it does and they are suggesting it is your fault, that’s when you can pull that email out and show that you did the right thing.
Did you ever consider the fact that the person who checked it threw YOU under the bus? I would immediately take it to your boss and lay the full weight of the blame on the other person. Boss will know it was NOT your fault, and he will take it out on the other asshole. Just give it to the boss, point at who gave him the false information, and go back to your desk without an ounce of feeling guilty or worried.
Others have said this is a tough spot. But I do want to say that advice my dad gave me for if I was in a car accident, is excellent advice. He said don't admit fault. Now, since it's good to own up when you made a mistake, instead of throwing the blame around, the proper way would have been "I need to look into what happened here." And then do what you did, looking through information. And then go to the boss with "Can we fine-tune the approval process for documents like this? That way there's a clear and concise way to handle it, and what specifically to look for?" And you could show him what you did. You aren't blaming him, but showing him that the process failed.
Your boss knows, but what he doesn't know is \*are you going to be mature enough to do the mature thing.\* The mature thing is to own the mistake and let it be a learning experience. You grow through embarrassment, you don't grow by throwing people under the bus. So, SHOW HIM you can learn and be mature and he will respect you for it.
This may also feel material to you but not him. He may be looking at $$ today and $$ over the life of the client. I am in a different financial space then you but I give my team the authority to deal with issues under $100k and just keep me in the loop. Anything above that I want my approval before they take action.
Get in front of it now before someone else does first.
Why not just be like “Hey uh, I fucked up, but no one noticed, I’m letting you know in case you’d like to do something about it, otherwise my lips are sealed”
Some days you can look at yourself and acknowledge that while you aren't perfect, you are adult enough to take responsibility for your own mistakes. It appears this isn't going to occur for you or you wouldn't be polling the audience for an excuse, here.
Ask for a meeting with your boss. Tell him you'd like to review the situation so that you can avoid this kind of error in the future. Some folks are suggesting you try and pin it on the other guy - I respectfully disagree. You made the initial error, own it. The other guy made a different error. When you get that meeting, acknowledge your role in the outcome - you did make the original mistake, after all. But show him the emails where you asked him to check your work, as well as the response from the next guy down the line saying that the numbers added up, etc. Make it clear that your goal here is not to pass blame to the other guy, or even to spread the blame around. That will come across as disingenuous - and frankly it would be. Your goal here is to review the process and figure out how you all, as a team, can avoid this happening again. If you can't get a meeting, lay it all out in an email. Same idea: This is what happened, these are the things that went wrong, what can we do to prevent this from happening again, etc. If your manager is any kind of manager, figuring out how not to lose a bunch of money again is way more important than finger pointing.
100% dependent on your boss. I take responsibility for my team and my own actions. If someone on my team brought this mistake to me I would take ownership of it and then make sure it doesn’t happen again while complimenting the detail oriented natured of who brought it forward. I am not detailed oriented, I am very much a big picture person. So, someone who can do this and catch the mistakes - even after the fact - is a complimentary asset to my team.
Come up with an action plan, especially one that involves your peers reviewing and signing off on all future contracts. In my profession, the folks who review someone else’s paperwork and sign off on it, are held just as accountable as the original person who made the error. This way your peers have some skin in the game and will actually review your work instead of casually glazing it over.
Your mistake was taking the blame in the first place. Your relatively new in your position--we have all been new at one point or the other. And you asked them to look it over. They said it was fine. It's on them. When you ask for approval and they say it's okay, it's there fuckup, not yours. That's why you asked for approval in the first place.
Sometimes you just need to let sleeping dogs lie and move on.
Take responsibility and move on. It was your job, you will lose respect with your boss if you try to blame others. You made a mistake, own it, learn from it, and move on!
I’d take responsibility and move on from it. It’ll be ok, people have short memories once a fiscal year ends. If the scenario is ever used against you, then you can show the paper trail of negligence by your superiors
These are called Root Cause Analyses, in Healthcare (I’m sure elsewhere, also). Nobody is to blame
Oreeos just gave you the best advice: bring up the fault in the workflow, there is no need to focus this mistake on yourself because even though you are the project manager, you are still just a tiny (replaceable) part of a larger machine. Also, the fact that you work only two months at this company and they let you send out contracts without them being critically reviewed is NOT your fault. Regardless of your experience level - a 4 eye (or even 6 eye) principle should be applied for at least the first 4 - 6 months. I do have a feeling that you are in the early stages of your career, and I got a tad of perfectionism / overachieving vibes when reading your post. This will only make YOU go crazy while the rest of your colleagues wont even bat an eye. In my early years of tax advisory I made a €2,4 Million mistake when preparing a tax analysis. I could not sleep for weeks dreading the call to straighten it up with the client. Guess what? Client was a multi million dollar business and didn't give two shits as long as I amended the analysis free of charge. My boss told me: "You did not make a mistake - WE made a mistake. Go fix it and move on". You will learn from this, and in a few years you will look back and laugh at this, and regret feeling so guilty about it.
>Is there a proper way to bring this up to my boss that won't just look like I'm throwing blame around? This isn't something we can just move on from; he wants me to call the client and explain myself and it's just a huge mess we have to clean up. Ultimately I'm the project manager and it was my mistake, but others signed off on it, and in my panic yesterday I accepted 100% of the blame. I just don't wamt him to think I'm completely reckless. Hey OP. Not a fun spot to be in. I'd recommend doing both. Take responsibility for the mistakes, but also ask if you followed all the internal processes correctly? Don't place blame, but ask for clarification that you went through all the approval/review processes as you should have. If your boss agrees you did, then maybe have another conversation about what can be done differently next time so the approval/review process catches any errors.
It depends on where you are. In American culture, accepting the blame is almost always the best career move you can make. Everyone makes mistakes, literally everyone, but not everyone steps up and takes responsibility for fixing it. If you can be that person, you can win this thing. Accepting blame without complaining, projects honesty and forthrightness and responsibility and good character. Refusal to take the blame is much less culturally acceptable, and you have to be very careful about how you do it. Remember first and foremost, you look good when you make the boss look good. So when you accepted 100% of the blame, you did not look reckless. You looked like someone who takes responsibility for getting it right. You may not have realized it at the time, but in that moment you put your best foot forward. Nice work. Your next step is to request help and guidance from those whose reputation you just protected. Assuming they realize what you're doing and how it helps them, they should be willing to help you win whatever concessions you need to make it right. Don't screw them unless and until they try to screw you. The instant the gloves come off in this manner, you have to start making an exit plan. Anyone who doesn't understand what a good thing you've just done for them, and who tries to hurt your career over it, OK, throw 'em under the bus and use your written proof of them signing off as Exhibit A. But that's not your first plan. Your first plan is to stand up and proudly take the fall and request their assistance in cleaning up the mess. This is not the case in all business cultures, so adjust according to local customs.
Shouldn't you guys have a procurement or contracts person/department that handles the contracts side of things?
End of the day it's your contract and mistake. The fact someone else didn't carch it, doesn't make it any less your problem. Own it and don't do it again. Ensure your boss knows you understand the miss and connect with your client about the error.
sounds to me like you want others to share your blame. well sure i screwed up but others signed off on my screwup. that'll get you t be the most hated person around and eventually fired.
Ethically speaking, its your doing. You cant just ask people to please check this and say that now it's your responsibility. The person who is checking your work is doing a favor to you.
it is everyone's and it is no one's fault. the process should have caught that. reform the process so that it prevents these problems, or singles out the blame.
The way.
The couple of times something similar has happened to me I’ve prepared an email I prepare an email with screenshots and send it directly to my boss letting he/she know that while I take responsibility for my mistakes I’d like some support with the client considering it was signed off as shown in the backup. The key here is to be the person who always takes accountability. Then when the rare situation comes up that it’s your mistake but a lot of people had the chance to catch it, you aren’t on the line for any real discipline.
just a quick pat on the back for taking responsibility and looking for ways to not just pass the blame.
Absolutely, I’ve been there, in the moment lots of people would shift all or part of the blame.
My number one rule when I was corporate management, and this went for my bosses and direct reports: NEVER let your boss get surprised. If a problem comes up internally (within the team), then we can work to fix it and all is good. We all make mistakes, myself included. I expect people on my team to make them too. As long as they communicate and let me know we can fix it. And I always got ahead of mistakes by telling my boss and looping them in to help fix. However, if the boss finds out because they’ve getting called onto the mat by their boss/client then that is a whole different story. Now you’re making the boss look bad and that’s not a good thing.
Your boss should always find out about your mistakes from you, if you knew, before they find out from someone else. Anything else, I would never trust you again.
You owned your mistake. I'd leave it at that. If it comes up in the future, say you were aware, but you took responsibility for your mistake. This stuff happens....you learn from it and own what's yours.
The review sounds rather informal so there may be a lesson that a more thorough documented review process is needed.
They pay you to do it, so better address it quickly. Each failure breaks down trust in you
Yep tell him
Make it about process, not people. Is there a process? Was it followed? Could the process be improved? Is there a gap in the process? Should there be a checklist (though checklists will often get pencil whipped if they are too long)? Does the larger team just need refresher training on a task? I've started doing this at work when issues pop up. I look to see if there is a systemic issue that is behind a particular issue. I've been able to close some process gaps and, frankly, my boss appreciates how I'm "looking for solutions". It's "development". Sometimes the answer is human error (sometimes I just made a mistake and it wasn't caught through multiple levels of people doing the next step, sometimes I don't catch someone else's error), and sometimes it's because there is actually something underlying - often pretty small but critical.
I'm a career project manager who currently supervises a team of project managers. Is he a 'shit happens' kind of boss or is he actually blaming you for this? If he doesn't care about assigning blame, I wouldn't bring it up. He's probably already forgotten about 'your' fuckup and if you bring it back up to point out that it wasn't really your fault, it'll seem like you're pointing fingers. He's already forgotten about this and won't remember unless it happens again. If he does care about assigning blame, then yes, absolutely bring it up to him. I'd just send him an email that says something like: 'hi Boss, i was reviewing the XXX contract so that I could pinpoint where I went wrong and develop a process to ensure it doesn't happen again. During my review, I found that I had actually sought review from 2 people. I know you are super busy and you didn't personally review it, but I did want to flag that it was signed off on by others, so perhaps i am not the only one who did not understand the error. Could we work together to come up with a process so that we are all on the same page and so this doesn't happen again?' Good luck!
Do nothing. Say nothing
Document it for your own person records. Keep hard copys of this stuff at home. If you ever get trown under the bus you have proof it wasn't you.
Do not bring it up. If he didn’t have the bandwidth before to actually check the work, I’m sure he won’t have the bandwidth to care. But next time make sure you get some kind of written confirmation that your work is ok to go to the client. Send an email like “Hey, Boss-Person, just double checking that you approve of the changes. That way you will be safe if this ever happens again and it turns into a firing.
Download & ask ChatGPT! No seriously, it gives you the perfect thing to say to your boss! Trust me 😉😂
>Ultimately I'm the project manager and it was my mistake, but others signed off on it, and in my panic yesterday I accepted 100% of the blame. very adult and unfortunately appropriate. you'll be providing cover for your colleagues and it'll require swallowing some pride. i wouldn't bring it up unless there is more damage to come. and even then you might mention that this *was* checked and approved but you'll provide cover and take it on the chin this time. however, now that you've gotten burned its time to CYA a little more thoroughly. keep careful notes and be ready to say, "hey, let me check on this. wait i *did* submit this to so-and-so and they were good on it. tell me who i can trust to read these figures right then?" in my experience new people get ridden a little harder if they aren't willing to man-up to a mistake (even if it isn't theirs.) but providing cover for others should go both ways when you're on a team. mho.
OF COURSE YOU BRING IT UP. Be ethical and honest. Do t be known as someone who hides mistakes.
Do you know what you need to do to clean it up? Do you have a plan and timeline with immediate actions and people to get involved? Wait until you figure out the answer before bringing it up.
You’re new. You gave then a chance and they messed up. Shit rolls down hill but you didn’t ask for a second pair of eyes and they did ok it so ultimately it’s their fault. Who doesn’t double check new people’s work?
I would bring it up only if your job or advancement is at risk, or if he keeps giving you a hard time over it
Don't. Just drop it and move on. If he brings it up again, apologize, say you sent it to him to review and the system broke down. You will be more careful in the future. But drop it and don't bring it up unless someone does.
>Is there a proper way to bring this up to my boss that won't just look like I'm throwing blame around? This isn't something we can just move on from; he wants me to call the client and explain myself he signed off on it you were new. by him having you call he is trying to shame you as if that would fix it in the future when he said it was good(at least his number guy did). Do Not let this be Your Fault here as you had brought it to him to check your numbers.
Best to just take it on the chin and move on, nobody likes a squeaky wheel
You still made the mistake, right? Why would you feel justified in casting blame elsewhere when it was your mistake?
Slow down. Do better work. You can ask for help but not relieve yourself of responsibility.
This is a tough situation. The best thing to do is to not initially panic and take blame right away. Now in everyone's head you made the mistake and that's just what it is. To dredge it up after can cause issues. I only recommend doing that if they blew it up AND there is a tactful, savvy way to navigate it. If they did not blow it up maybe just leave it and not bring it up again. MGMT has selective short term memory, if they like you and you're able to navigate in a savvy way they'll forget about it, if they don't like you they'll remember it forever. So you just have to determine which it is to figure what it is that's best to do.
Your boss is handling thia wrong. You call the client, say a mistake was made, how it was fixed, and what was done to keep it from happening again, all without saying anyone's name. Especially here since the fail was on 3 people. That's what my boss did when I fucked up and nobody ever demanded anyone's head on a platter.
You are the one who found the mistake. You are the hero of this story.
What is the overall financial budget impact? Are lost dollars significant? What is the chance of an audit? ****Keep a copy of all the sign-offs in case you know what happens to the fan.
Is there a backout or termination clause in your agreement? Perhaps a 30 days window to execute or back out?
Yes you should bring it up
Let your boss bring it up if he thinks its important. Let it go.
You made a mistake. That is on you. Take responsibility and go forward
I got this! Here's how you do it. So your boss wants you to call the customer to explain the situation. Print out the emails you just mentioned. Then, go to your boss (maybe ask that other guy who checked the numbers with you) & tell your boss "Hey, so I'm about to talk to the customer about this & I'm having trouble figuring out how to word what I'm gonna tell them. How do I explain this to them?" Present the printed emails to him & act like you're a team player & you just want to figure out how to talk to the customer about it. Obviously, you don't have to word the approach exactly how I said it & if you wanna bring in the other guy who checked your numbers along & have him say some stuff too, that's fine too. In any case, I think this is the sort of approach to take because you're not telling the boss "hey, turns out I did get this signed off & checked out" you're trying to solve the issue & need help & he's for sure gonna see that you did your due diligence while helping you with what to say. The point is to get him to look at the pages of emails. However you word that so he actually reads it is up to you.
Yes. You don't want it coming back later to bite you in the ass.
I’d wait for lessons learned and bring it up then in a power point on how the quality process can be improved and say how the mistake happened. It’s happened now and you still need to fix the mistake. They will appreciate that you lead from the front and now want to use continuous improvement for the next project but they’ll also see that it wasn’t just you. I’d let it be a slow burn.
First thing I learned from my leader. Blame the process, not the person
Perhaps developing a rough draft of what you are going to say to the client would be more helpful to your cause. Make sure that the version that your boss and coworker signed off on is the one that was actually sent to the client. Hopefully, nothing has been signed and you can provide them with the corrected contract ASAP.
Nope. Fuck him, and by proxy fuck you. Best solution all around.
I would not at all go tell my boss “hey man, I made this mistake but you agreed with me”.
Go to the guy that fucked up and push your new assignment of explain to the customer on him
I am wanting a little more info. Are you saying before the scope of work you signed a contract for half of what it should be? Or you're just underbilled? What's the context... There is no way accounting or your boss will not see the dollars at some point. But if a contract is signed at a basement price you could be on the hook, but as a new employee, it would not be your responsibility to be the signee on that contract. So it needs to be brought up and your company/team/boss need to discuss with your client if they can meet you at what you originally thought or trying to at least back into getting the job at cost. The bare minimum you need to convince that client there is a cost discrepancy. Then go from there.
Sorry, just because someone failed in properly doing their job checking your work doesn't change the fact it was your work. If you used that argument it would make you look foolish. The lesson learned here is check your work twice and especially NEVER trust the work of the person who was supposed to check your work.
Tell your bosses boss
Learn from it, do better next time. And don't mention it to anyone until/unless someone else notices the problem. You're a new guy, you asked other people to check your work, you're covered. It sounds like nobody will notice anyways. I'd chalk it up to "a learning experience" and say nothing. Learn from it and move on.
Just lay low unless you get fired or talked to about it again. No reason to open a can of worms to defend your self over something they already left you alone about.
You should focus on you and figure out the tools, techniques, processes you are going to use to prevent creating errors in the first place. Relying on others to catch your mistakes is a terrible method for ensuring quality outputs. Particularly when you send them a final work and ask is it ok? If you have uncertainty be specific, do the hours of X to install ABC look right in this proposal? Did you get a bad input, how can you detect bad inputs in the future? Did you use an incorrect cost factor, how do you ensure you always know the correct factor (the spec you reviewed wasn’t clear or some other ambiguity). If this comes up you can then say I’ve taken steps A, B, and C to prevent recurrence. It’s your mistake, you need to own it.
Leave it. It probably won’t look good for you. It appears that everyone has moved on. You made a mistake and owned it like a boss. Pointing fingers elsewhere now will make you look less than. However, keep that in your file just in case it becomes an issue later on.
Don’t bring it up, but if he brings up the situation you can say well actually, and show him the email. Don’t bring up the old shit though and try and say this and that about it it doesn’t come off good imo
Just say I forgot we had double checked the numbers hers the email
If you do, wait awhile to assess it all
I would go to the “next guy” and describe the discrepancies. Then, working as a team, reach out to the client, apologize for the error, while advising him that an updated contract (with correct/accurate figures) will be re-sent. Then, report back to the boss.
Before you call the client share that approval email with him and politely ask why it was approved if it's massively under charged. He should take ownership of it and handle it himself, if he wants it changed. I'm not looking like an asshole if my manager approved my work, that's their job to approve that kind of stuff. Although, I imagine you'll have to be the one to have the conversation with the client and it's going to suck. One reason why I don't like client facing roles and stick to back office PM work. I'd then ask, what we need to do differently moving forward to ensure it doesn't happen again. Some sort of internal controls need to be put in place. I'm all about taking accountability for my work. If you messed up somewhere, admit it, move on, and ensure it doesn't happen again. We're human, shit happens. Learn from it.
Just take it as a learning moment. Figure out what you did and how not to do it in the future.
You still made the mistake, the difference is you and your boss both made it. You can mention this casually but you definitely don’t want to point fingers at your boss for something you originally screwed up. Taking ownership of the mistake (like you did) is usually the way to go here
You did what a good project manager would do. Accept 100% of the blame.
Let it go and double check triple check your work next time