Most problems announce themselves early: a supplier’s dates start to slip, or a process drifts from how it’s meant to run. Hear about it before it becomes an incident.
We only find the single point of failure when it fails.
Bad news gets softened on its way up to me.
Every month I’m reacting to something we could have seen.
You hear when something in the operation starts to move, and can deal with it before it escalates.
When the way work is actually done drifts from the way it’s supposed to be done, you hear about it.
See where the business has come to depend on one person, one supplier, one workaround.
What reaches you is what’s true, without the editing it would collect on the way up the reporting line.
Signal comes from inside the operation, instead of from a summary written three weeks later.
A short walkthrough on your own business, no preparation needed.