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Process Schmocess: The Art of Retroactive Accountability

There’s nothing quite like a senior leader or consultant who shows zero interest in a project—until it breaks. Suddenly, they emerge like a mystical oracle, clutching retroactive wisdom and a list of expectations they never shared but swear were obvious.

This is retroactive accountability: the professional sport of being held responsible for failing to meet invisible requirements.

It usually starts with vague direction like, “Make sure this is tight” or the classic “We trust your judgment.” Glowing praise at the time—ominous in hindsight. Even those of us who chase clarity are often met with, “You’ll figure it out!”  Translation: We have no idea either, but it’ll be your fault if it goes wrong.

You build. You launch. You feel decent about it. And then, without warning:

“This isn’t what I had in mind.”

Of course it isn’t. Because no one shared what was in their mind. But now they’ve dusted off a requirements doc written somewhere between 11pm and your last breath of hope, ready to hold you accountable.

It includes:

• Metrics nobody agreed on

• Stakeholders who appeared out of nowhere

• A new process apparently “always in place”

• Formatting preferences from someone’s 1994 PowerPoint trauma

Then come the classics:

“Did you not think to loop me in?”
“Why wasn’t I consulted?”
“How did this happen?”

Well, last time you looped them in, it led to a six-week thread of tangents, non-answers, and ghosting. But sure—your fault for not following up harder.

At this point, you’ll bite your tongue and respond with:

“Thanks for the feedback. I’ll incorporate those expectations moving forward.”
(Translation: Next time I’ll book a séance.)

Let’s be honest—it’s not a process gap. It’s a leadership communication problem dressed up as your failure. Vague expectations, silent stakeholders, and post-mortem blame dumps are not strategy—they’re dysfunction.

If we want better outcomes, we need to say the quiet parts out loud. Expectations should come before the fallout, not after the smoke clears.

Until then, the rest of us will keep documenting everything and updating our ever-growing list titled: Things I Was Supposed to Know Without Being Told.

Because in the world of process schmocess, being wrong in advance is just another Tuesday.