Three steps to get your bearings

A few years ago we shipped software with a crucial bug. The kind that makes leadership look for someone to blame and makes you wonder if your judgment is completely broken.

I could have walked into the team meeting asking who screwed up. I’d seen other managers do exactly that. They immediately shift focus to finding the guilty party. But I’d developed a different habit over the years, partly from reading the book “Crucial Conversations” and partly from watching blame shifting destroy teams.

Facts first: “We released version X. It has this specific bug. Here’s what we know about impact.” No interpretation, no context, no excuses. Just what actually happened.

Then feelings: “This makes us look incompetent. Leadership is annoyed. I feel like I’ve lost credibility.” The stuff everyone was feeling but afraid to say out loud.

Finally, the future: “What needs to change so this doesn’t happen again?”

What surprised me was how quickly the conversation shifted from blame to problem solving. Not because I had some master plan, but because facts-feelings-future kept us focused on what we could actually control.

The same pattern works when stakes are higher too. When someone crosses a line, you still start the same way: “This is what you said. This is how it made people feel. This needs to stop.” But whether it ends with boundary setting or process changes depends on what actually happened.