The well-known adage is ‘It’s lonely at the top.’ Most executive teams will tell you it’s also quiet up there. The challenge of holding the 30,000-foot view is you have no idea what is happening down on the ground. When the Japanese car industry began to expand into the U.S., they also exported their customer service style. Japanese car makers gained an edge by making regular maintenance like oil changes, simple and customer friendly. Meanwhile, many American car company executives hadn’t personally experienced their own customer service. If they had they would have discovered a gap in the quality. Ultimately, Japanese companies built stronger loyalty by providing customers a better experience.
C-suite teams need a radar system of strong managers who will raise issues early.
C-suite teams tend to look far and wide to understand new opportunities and future strategies. Of course, they also try to see threats and risks. But bad news often starts small, or in unexpected places. And big problems are often visible only once they pass in the rear-view mirror. That isn’t a shortcoming of leaders, it’s simply the reality that you can’t be everywhere all at once.
That’s the kind of thing that makes a radar system so critical for leadership. What are customers saying when they reach a call centre, check out online or sample a product? It’s impractical for the top executives to personally witness this. And yet, somehow they must stay informed. Small advantages turn into large ones, minor misses start to redefine the brand. The pace of change and the reach of global issues makes it hard to distinguish small risks from serious ones.
Leaders should rely on a radar system of teams that not only pick up noise but can decipher it. Some things are mere nuisances—until picked up by social media. Other risks seem manageable…until you see the ripple effect on supply chains or delivery costs. Many crises began as manageable problems on a slow burn. But they don’t stay manageable forever.
The past might be prologue. But sometimes it’s just the past.
Leaders often rely on lagging indicators: data like ratings, fulfillment speeds, or sentiment analysis, but those metrics only capture what’s already happened. But effective leadership teams aren’t trying to revisit the past, they want to anticipate the future. The real value lies in recognizing the subtle, real-time signals that there is a shift afoot. That could be the quiet increase of complaints, the emerging pattern of employee departures, or the near-crisis that was barely caught.
A strong radar system means open communication and the opportunity to signal when something isn’t just a one-off but a new trend—and not in the right direction. But speaking up is hard to do. And unless it’s in their interest, no one wants to offer up bad information. The job of the C-suite then is to make pointing out potential problems something to be celebrated.
Three ways leaders can create teams that signal to them without hesitation.
Create a listening culture. Being aware that a lot of the valuable information is on the front line should drive a culture of encouraged notifications. But employees can’t just be invited to speak up about small things; they need to be encouraged and rewarded. After all, speaking truth to power is a risky move. To de-risk that behaviour requires a conscious decision to make that communication easy and effortless.
Formalise the listening process. Satya Nadella introduced ‘employee listening systems’ at Microsoft to ensure that insights from across the organisation reached the executive level. By formalizing these conversations, Nadella built a culture where ideas and concerns are heard early and don’t get lost in translation—or buried in bureaucracy. The playbook at Microsoft is notably robust with a specific structure in the town halls, a requirement to attend (they are held monthly) and an extensive process to get diverse views from around the global team.
The exact way this can get implemented in each company will naturally vary. But it can include regular meetings, direct communication channels, surveys and feedback loops that connect employees with leadership.
Lean into the negative enthusiastically. It is instinctive to reward team members for positive results: the top salesperson, the innovation, the improved design. Leaders who are equally enthusiastic about those who help avert crises, minimise risks and challenge top level assumptions will themselves be rewarded with even greater transparency from across the organisation.
C-suite teams that have built a radar system through the organisation will be rewarded with early signalling.
These kinds of processes don’t get built overnight. Few people will engage immediately. And any significant shift in corporate culture for large companies takes time. But even executed imperfectly, it’s a vital part of sustained long-term success. Understanding what’s not working is as important as what is.
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