Unfortunately when their bad ideas make the publisher unhappy I get blamed. This is just something I have to except as part of my job. Its much easier for the creative director to blame the external developers or unnamed production assistant for the issues than take responsibility and loose face with the publisher. However the creative director knows where the real problem is so my job is secure.

I try to do damage control as much as possible. When time permits we prepare alternatives to the client’s decisions so that when it comes down to it we have the solution ready to go. I’m also often in the position where I have to go to the dev team when they refuse to do something ridicules for the client and say “I know its stupid and a waste of time but please please please do it for me.” I’ve found that they are more likely to do something they view as a person favor to me than as the whim of the guys they can’t stand and have no respect for.

Helpful tactics:

Create demos of the problem
Work iteratively
Make them think the better idea is theirs.
Always be respectful
Understand that they probably don’t see the problem because as your bosses they aren’t as close to it as you are.
Document it if it’s a huge screw up so you don’t get fired.
Know who your boss will listen too at the company and take the problem to them for support.
Except that the project’s success or failure is often in the hands of your boss not you.
Always learn from the mistakes of your superiors and remember to watch out for them when you are in charge.

It’s a classic problem that everyone encounters sometime in their lives.

Boss: Do A.
You: If I do A, B will happen.
Boss: Do A anyway.

Later:
Boss: Ohmygoodness B happened! This is all your fault for doing A!

This has protected me in most places when I believed a plan would fail. However how you record the issue, making it diplomatic in language is key. Also I find that I have been in error in what I thought would occur. Infrequent but enough that I realize just document the issue and the resolution and move on is best course.

What does this type of documentation provide besides covering yourself that you did best effort to prevent a risk or issue from breaking a project. By putting the issue in writing the risk or issue seems to become more conreate and I find its more likely to be addressed rather then just pushed to the side. It also creates raw material for a lessons learned framework that can be used for the next project.

Having said all that there are employers that are unreasonalbe and I’m sure I’m not the only one to suffer through one. I don’t know what the solution is for this other than finding a new place when the opportunity arises.

@Sean: good thought on that “practise run”. also, very well pondered about that “who is right/wrong” aspect. It’s so easy to forget.

If it were a work scenario, where we wouldn’t have time to elaborate such, I think I would try to make it so that my idea would have been the bosses idea, so that everything would go right.

It’s really complicated sometimes knowing that things will go wrong, that you can’t do anything about it, and that you will be responsible for it. So, in those cases, either get away from it, or, improvise, which would be my choice.

I can’t remember blaming other people for my failures. Ignoring objections or feedback… yes, sometimes. The older I get the more I realize that there are hardly enemies but many different views and opinions. So I’m trying to learn from them.

In my opinion it’s all about tolerance and allowing feedback.

The fundamental issue is communication. The other person isn’t hearing or understanding your concern (or you, quite frankly, aren’t listening to their side). The trick then becomes finding a way to communicate the problem in terms the other person can understand – and that’s difficult and often frustrating.

It leaps out at me that in the case of the presentation you mention, it seems like you and your uncle didn’t do a dry run together. It seems like if you had a practice run, it would have been pretty obvious that a 3 minute stretch of animation would be too long. It’s an old trick in business to set up a situation where the failure will become obvious – but do it in a context where there’s no serious repercussions for that failure.

:)