Project management: why do warnings go unreported?
A project can have regular reporting without important concerns reaching the people able to act on them. The management question is precise: how can a concern become safe to raise before it turns into an incident?
What the literature establishes
Amy Edmondson (1999, Administrative Science Quarterly) identifies an association between team psychological safety and learning behaviours, including discussing errors and seeking feedback. Psychological safety refers to a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. In a project setting, this invites a distinction between having a reporting channel and believing that it can be used without losing face.
Managerial openness beyond the message
James R. Detert and Ethan R. Burris (2007, Academy of Management Journal) show that managerial openness is associated with employees voicing suggestions intended to improve organisational functioning. Their findings support a mediating role for psychological safety in this relationship. Applied cautiously to project warnings, this mechanism suggests that a manager's response to an objection matters as much as the invitation to speak.
The hasty conclusion
It might seem sufficient to ask everyone to speak up more often. Yet a formal invitation does not remove the perceived risk of contradicting a sponsor or undermining an announced milestone. Nor does psychological safety remove the need to verify a warning: it facilitates examination without turning every concern into evidence. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
These studies do not specifically examine warning systems in Zurich projects, nor do they demonstrate that a particular procedure reduces incidents. Their field findings illuminate relationships between team climate, management and behaviour without isolating every possible factor. An increase in recorded warnings may therefore reflect greater openness, a deteriorating project or both; the count alone cannot distinguish between them.
A practical check in Zurich
As part of SHR's project management programme, teams in Zurich's financial services, insurance and tech sectors, as well as European headquarters of international groups, can be offered an exercise: track new warnings for four weeks without recording sensitive data. For each warning, record the date, the role responsible for reviewing it and the first reasoned response, whether the decision is to act, investigate or take no further action. Then calculate the proportion of warnings that received this response within the timeframe agreed at the outset, and review those left unanswered. This measure checks the observable handling of warnings, not psychological safety itself or the absence of unspoken problems. To go further: explore the Project Management training in Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Project Management in Zurich
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