CYA (or “Cover Your Ass”) is almost always used negatively, putting down people who want to protect themselves.
Here’s a secret: everyone does, and those who don’t, probably should. Because, in the real world, shit happens. Even if you work awesomely and professionally, there will still be ill-will sometimes, bad seeds, confusion, personality clashes, and other situations that lead to problems. Given that inevitability, doesn’t it make sense to ensure you’re protected when it does happen to you? Because it will!
But here’s a secret: in this series, we’ve discussed the powerful strategy of extreme documentation and extreme transparency. Let’s imagine, hypothetically, you follow that. Well, following that does have an extra, additional bonus (on top of the reasons we’ve documented on why you should follow it) and that is: automatically taking care of a huge portion of what is needed to C Y A.
Let’s just step through how. When things do go south in a business context, and sometimes they will, it often boils down to one simple question:
What did you do, or what did you not do?
Ultimately, the root source of a lot of these conflicts is just what did or didn’t happen, and then all the key details around those. Why did you do that? Who told you to do that? Did you really do it? Did you do it in manner X, or in manner Y? Did the request to do it imply Q or imply R? How much time did it take? Did you inform the relevant people about whether it was done or not? Are you actually doing your work? If so, are you actually paying attention? And so forth.
Here’s one of the secondary benefits of following a strategy of extreme transparency: it goes a long way towards solving this precise problem.
Since the root of a lot of the challenges for which CYA is needed is all about “what actually happened, and why” by following as a religious belief a) always documenting every little thing and b) always sharing to the team the documentation, then you’re just automatically covered. QED!
