Call your shots.

I say this over and over. Every time I say it, it’s because I see someone rationalizing away some result that they didn’t want with the explanation that, “No one could have predicted this,” or something like that. And it’s frustrating, because every time I’ve seen some leader say, “No one could have predicted this,” there’s a bunch of people on the team – boots on the ground – that are like, “We *did* predict this. We told you exactly this would happen.”

And yet, because no one put it in writing, no one planted their flag in the ground, the leadership goes, “Yep. Our decision process was correct, we’re smart, but there was no way to see this thing coming.”

Without things in writing, it’s easy to handwave them away. It’s a gut-level reaction, and something that a lot of people consider positive, because it’s a way to “not dwell on the past” and “move forward”. But it’s also a really spectacular way of *not learning*.

So for me, when faced with a fork in the road – some decision that either I need to make and be accountable for, or a decision someone else needs to make & is asking for my input – I write it down. I say what I think will happen and why. I try to imagine what will happen if they do something else, and describe that as well. I talk about the circumstances, my assumptions, and what kinds of things would change the outcome. And I give it to them in writing.

It doesn’t magically fix things. Your boss (or whoever) will still handwave things away. They will still say “No one could have predicted…” even after you remind them of this thing that you wrote and sent them *before* the decision was made. You will need to remind them of this in a graceful way that absolutely is not, “See, I told you so!” But you want to be firm and say, “This is what I predicted, this is what happened, here’s why when we come to this kind of crossroads again, I’d love to help you understand the potential outcomes.”

It’s a slow process. But this does make progress. It helps build your credibility. It takes time, it’ll be frustrating. But it’s also so much better than hearing the folks in charge behave as though this information never existed, and it’s the only way I’ve found to actually make positive change.

Sometimes you’ll be wrong. Own it. But always call your shots.