Why does my team still hide things from me?
You built a forecast that works. The math holds. And still, someone tells you in the sync what they should have told you three weeks ago. This is not a planning failure. You cannot build a model that outruns a person who has decided not to tell you something. Ask yourself plainly: what happens to someone on your team when they bring you bad news early? If the honest answer is 'a harder conversation, a worse review, your visible irritation' — you have your diagnosis. They are not hiding the truth from you. They are protecting themselves from you. This is fixable, but not with better spreadsheets. It is fixed the way trust is always fixed. By what you do next time someone tells you something you didn't want to hear.
Your numbers are fine. What's broken is what happens after someone tells you the truth early. If honesty ever cost them — a hard question, a worse rating, your visible disappointment — they learned to wait. Fix that, and the sandbagging stops. You cannot forecast your way out of a trust problem.
What changes unlock by starting
- Fewer late surprises, because people stop waiting to tell you.
- Forecasts that show what your team actually knows, not what they think you want to hear.
- A team that brings you problems while they are still small.
- You spend less energy hunting for the truth and more time acting on it.