> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.scopecreep.co.uk/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Your team doesn't need to know the building's on fire - URL: https://www.scopecreep.co.uk/your-team-doesnt-need-to-know-the-buildings-on-fire/ - Published: 2026-10-09T00:00:21.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-09T00:00:21.000Z - Description: Somewhere along the way, transparency became a PM virtue nobody's allowed to question. Share everything. Keep the team in the loop. Let them see the whole picture. - Author: Jamie Wright - Tags: Project Management Somewhere along the way, transparency became a PM virtue nobody's allowed to question. - Share everything. - Keep the team in the loop. - Let them see the whole picture. ***Lovely in theory***. In practice, a fair amount of what gets labelled transparency is a PM forwarding their own stress to people who can't do anything about it. *Some context.* A few years back, at an agency, one of my director's favourite clients asked for a change on their retainer. Not a big change. Not a broken checkout. It wasn't even an e-commerce site. Nobody was losing money by the minute. You wouldn't have known that from our director. The tone suggested the client's entire business, and possibly the agency, would cease to exist if it wasn't live that day. That day being a Friday. "No" wasn't on the menu. The developers who knew the project were on holiday. The only person with any capacity was a junior. I could have jumped on a call and given them the full briefing. The director's watching. The client's suddenly a VIP. It has to be today. You've never touched this codebase. Good luck. I know exactly how that goes. A junior dev with that much weight on them doesn't write better code. They freeze, overthink, second-guess every line and probably break something unrelated on the way. Stress doesn't make anyone faster. It just makes them worse at the thing you need done quickly. > A **good** PM passes information on. A **great** PM decides what's useful to pass on and quietly absorbs the rest. So I didn't. I said something like, "Could you give this a quick look when you get a sec and let me know what you think?" Casual. Low key. The kind of ask you'd make on a slow afternoon. They had a look. They thought it was fine. They fixed it. It went live that afternoon and, as far as I know, they still have no idea it was ever urgent. That's the job, as far as I'm concerned. Not *every* time, and not about *everything*. A good PM passes information on. A great PM decides what's useful to pass on and quietly absorbs the rest. ## **What absorbing isn't** This isn't an argument for keeping your team in the dark. [If the project's in trouble](https://www.scopecreep.co.uk/the-status-meeting-that-manufactures-surprises/) and they can do something about it, they need to know. [If deadlines are moving](https://www.scopecreep.co.uk/why-your-estimate-was-right-and-the-project-was-still-late/), they need to know. If their work is being judged, they definitely need to know. The test I use is simple. Will knowing this help them do the work, or will it just make them feel how I feel right now? If it's the second one, that feeling is mine to deal with. Handling pressure from above is part of what I'm paid for. [Passing it down unfiltered](https://www.scopecreep.co.uk/take-the-learnings-from-your-worst-manager/) isn't transparency. It's delegation of the worst kind. ## **Where the panic starts** Panic rarely starts with the people doing the work. A client sneezes, someone senior catches a cold, and by the time it reaches the person at the keyboard it's a full-blown emergency. Whoever sets the deadlines would probably be surprised how often their "today" [gets quietly translated](https://www.scopecreep.co.uk/the-scope-creep-dictionary/) into something the team can actually work with. If the PM's any good, nobody upstairs ever sees it happen. Which is sort of the point. ## **The cost** Absorbing isn't free. You'll have afternoons where you're outwardly calm and inwardly refreshing the staging site every four minutes. Nobody thanks you for a crisis they never knew happened. ![](https://www.scopecreep.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/what-to-say-instead-1.png) But the team keeps its head, the junior keeps their confidence, and the director eventually stops refreshing their inbox. Good PMs [keep everyone informed](https://www.scopecreep.co.uk/nobody-has-ever-read-your-raci/). Great ones know which bits of information are just weather.