“If my employee didn’t tell me about a looming disaster as big as this, and it blew up in my face, I’d fire them. Immediately.”
My boss would fire employees for saying, “I’m working on it.” He wanted to know what was being done and if there were problems, what action was being taken to rectify it.
Pretty simple really.
I was never that harsh. But I would follow up with, "how". If the answer was; "I e-mailed..., I left a message..., etc." we got to have a little closed door mentoring session in my office. As the guy responsible for other folks, my most important role was making sure my managers were successful on our behalf. I cannot help if I don't know. Blind sided surprises to executives are not good for the careers of those that report to them.
Pissing away $650 million dollars on a total failure over 3 years and not telling the boss is certainly grounds for a hostile dismissal, if not criminal charges of fraud.