To have a shield against ill-will is a great piece of skill in a ruler... it is well therefore, even at the cost of our pride, to have such a scapegoat, such a target for unlucky undertakings.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
The counsel is to arrange for someone else to absorb the blame for your failures. It was written for princes and it is still practised in institutions, which is precisely why it belongs in a complete edition and why we will not dress it up as wisdom. It is included, unendorsed, for one purpose: recognition. The shield is fitted gradually and looks like trust. You are given ownership of a project whose key decisions are made elsewhere. Your name appears on documents you did not draft. Praise for the work stays upstairs while responsibility for the outcome is delegated with unusual generosity. When it fails, the record shows your signature and the decisions show nobody's. If you see three of those signs together, you are not being promoted; you are being positioned. Ask for decision authority in writing to match the responsibility, keep your own dated record of what you recommended and what was overruled, and decline the ownership if the authority does not arrive. Maxim 187, done honestly, routes unpleasant things through process rather than through a person; that is the legitimate version of the same problem, and it is where this counsel should have stopped.