Messenger Training In Teams

I’ve worked with data teams where someone spotted the broken number first and decided not to mention it.

Ron Westrum sorted organisations by how information moves. Some shoot the messenger, some just neglect them, and the generative ones train people to speak up.

In a data team the messenger is usually a mid-level engineer who notices on Thursday that the churn figure in Monday’s board pack double-counts a migration. The last person who raised something like that spent a week defending it. So this time the finding waits.

Training the messenger is mostly boring mechanics:

• A fixed format for the flag: what’s wrong, since when, which reports read it, how sure you are.
• One channel for those flags, read daily by a named lead.
• A response rule for the lead: say thanks first, questions after.
• Credit somewhere visible, like the incident log or the sprint review.

I haven’t always got that response right myself. Early on I asked “how did this get past you?” before I said thanks, and the flags went quiet for a while.

What happened to the last person on your team who said a number was wrong?