Most leaders pride themselves on pristine dashboards. Revenue, margins, customer satisfaction, IT uptime, cyber performance — everything is measured, tracked, and displayed. Yet when a crisis hits — a wave of resignations, a sudden drop in morale, a mishandled cyberattack, or a rumour that spreads faster than the facts — we hear the same refrain: “We didn’t see it coming.” False. Someone, somewhere, did see it. But the signals were too weak, too human, too ambiguous to make it to the boardroom slide deck.
Resilience starts where data stops — in the space of human perception.
In this article:
- The three main families of weak signals
- Why dashboards rarely capture them
- Key Emotional Indicators (KEI) worth tracking
- What measuring them implies
- The tangible benefits of doing so
The Paradox of Prevention
Prevention and prediction are not the same.
- Prediction is the art of extrapolating from data to foresee outcomes.
- Prevention is the art of observing what challenges the system — and learning from it before it breaks.
Modern organisations have become experts in measuring the hard — financial indicators, compliance, performance — yet almost deaf to movements in the living: behaviours, emotions, perceptions, and subtle cultural drifts.
A recent study revealed a striking bias: we tend to overinterpret weak signals when they fit our models and underinterpret strong ones when they don’t. That’s a major obstacle for any organisation aiming to build a governance of listening.
A weak signal isn’t an alarm bell. It’s a tremor — a small vibration, a breath that feels “off”. It doesn’t yet carry measurable gravity, but it carries meaning. And it’s that meaning leaders must learn to listen to.
The Three Main Families of Weak Signals
1️⃣ Behavioural Signals
- A once-energised employee grows distant.
- A manager speaks faster, laughs less.
- A team starts avoiding meetings where debates used to thrive.
Tiny nuances — yet when repeated, they reveal an inner misalignment.
👉 Risks: silent burnout, erosion of trust, emotional disengagement.
2️⃣ Collective and Cultural Signals
The tone of exchanges shifts.
Humour becomes more caustic, discussions more polarised.
“Tribes” emerge in Slack or coffee breaks.
Decisions get discussed more than they get executed.
👉 Risks: fragmentation, mistrust, loss of transversal collaboration.
3️⃣ Systemic and Organisational Signals
Emails multiply — everyone copied “just in case.”
Meetings happen without decisions.
Internal surveys stop surfacing anything meaningful.
👉 Risks: rigid governance, fear-based climate, collective inertia.
Why Traditional Dashboards Don’t Capture Weak Signals
Classic dashboards rely on structured, homogeneous data — numbers, ratios, a few comments.
Weak signals, on the other hand, are heterogeneous and contextual.
They are behaviours, emotions, atmospheres — not easy to quantify, but still observable.
They can be measured, provided you know where to look and how to define indicators that reflect the living system, not just its mechanical parts.
A Few KEIs Worth Watching
Modern prevention isn’t about stacking more KPIs. It’s about connecting micro-variations across the system — human, social, informational, emotional.
These Key Emotional Indicators (KEI) complement technical and financial dashboards. They capture the human temperature that traditional metrics forget: trust, fatigue, confidence, belonging, fear.
| Domain | Signal to observe | Where to detect it | What it really means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internal Climate | Drop in survey participation Shorter, more neutral responses | HR tools Anonymous forms | Care is declining. The emotional fabric is thinning. |
| Digital Interactions | Rise in emails with +3 recipients Slower response times | Internal messaging | Trust is eroding. Communication turns defensive. |
| Collective Energy | Increase in micro-absences Drop in activity on Mondays and Fridays | HR Data Badge logs System log-ins | Energy is leaking. The collective is running on empty. |
| Governance Transparency | Growth in anonymous feedback or “no-name” questions | Feedback tools Internal Meetings | People still speak — but no longer face-to-face. Rumours fill the gap. |
| Cohesion & Belonging | Fewer reactions on internal posts Decline in cross-team initiatives | Intranet Yammer Teams | The we turns into each for themselves. |
| Proximity Leadership | Cancelled meetings Fewer informal exchanges | Agenda On-site observations | Management is drifting away from reality. |
| Perception of Security | Surge in “unconfirmed” tickets or false cyber alerts | Helpdesk / IT | The emotional climate of safety is deteriorating. |
These signals don’t replace data — they give it meaning. They expose what’s alive, not just what’s compliant.
A weak signal is the whisper before the system speaks out loud.
The CMVRH fact sheet on workplace discontent lists classic manifestations of weak signals: withdrawal, isolation, tardiness, demotivation, decreased concentration, etc.
In an industrial setting, the HSE Guide points out that unusual noise from a machine or an unusual frequency of minor incidents are weak signals that are often overlooked.
What Measuring KEIs Really Implies
1️⃣ Learn to read reality differently — change posture
2️⃣ Adapt governance processes — integrate new data
3️⃣ Equip without dehumanising
1️⃣ From Control to Vigilance
Detecting weak signals is first and foremost a matter of strategy, vision, and mindset.
It calls for collective, cross-disciplinary reading — HR, IT, communications, finance — to interpret nuance rather than react to noise.
Establish a vigilance dashboard, reviewed periodically, where signals are discussed, not just reported.
This requires sensitive leadership: accepting uncertainty and resisting the temptation to over-quantify.
👉🏻Read our article on resilience and governance
Weak signals are not anomalies to fix, but information to interpret. That means:
- Replace the logic of compliance (“everything’s fine until it breaks”) with one of continuous observation (“everything’s fine, but where are the tensions emerging?”).
- Build a culture that values alert-sharing, open dialogue, curiosity, and constructive doubt.
- Make vigilance a collective skill, not a specialised role.
In practice:
- Train managers to spot micro-signs — mood shifts, silences, subtle tension — without judgement or overreaction.
- Develop listening and analytical neutrality; learn to separate signal from noise.
- Create safe spaces for honest conversations without fear of sanction.
- And, crucially, train leaders to welcome bad news — because governance that punishes alertness destroys vigilance.
Read also: Resilience and Governance — Balancing Humans and Organisations.
2️⃣ New Processes, New Data, New KEIs
Adapting Governance Processes
Weak signals can’t be managed like KPIs. They require cycles of reflection and exchange.
- Integrate vigilance reviews into management routines — for example, monthly cross-department meetings that compare internal and external signals.
- Create confidential or transversal reporting channels (not necessarily hierarchical).
- Link observations to HR, quality, safety, and communication processes to foster collective learning.
- Add a “trends / attention points” section to strategic dashboards.
- Recognise and reward “good sensors” — those who bring valuable insights forward.
Embracing New Data Sources
Organisations must learn to combine quantitative and qualitative signals:
- Internal climate: turnover, absenteeism, micro-conflicts, anonymous feedback
- Customer relations: rising minor complaints, slower responses, changes in tone
- Operational indicators: procedural gaps, recurring anomalies, near-miss incidents
- External environment: rumours, reputational hints, regulatory shifts, geopolitical or cyber watch
The goal isn’t to measure everything — it’s to spot what’s drifting before it breaks.
3️⃣ Equip Without Dehumanising
Use monitoring and analysis tools — text mining, sentiment analysis, feedback loops — but keep human discernment at the core.
Automate collection where it makes sense, but leave interpretation to mixed teams (HR, Comms, IT, Operations).
Make the invisible visible — without turning observation into surveillance.
Technology supports awareness; it doesn’t replace it.
The Benefits of Measuring KEIs
Four key benefits emerge when organisations begin to integrate weak signals and emotional data into their governance of resilience.
1️⃣ Anticipate Instead of Endure
By detecting early signals, leaders can identify crises long before they surface — whether cyber, HR, reputational or operational.
Intervening at the signal stage costs a fraction of what it does at the incident stage.
👉 A weak signal costs roughly ten times less to address than a visible crisis.
It’s the difference between steering a curve — and hitting the wall.
2️⃣ Strengthen Internal and External Trust
When people feel that their organisation listens, trust deepens.
Employees sense that their voices and moods matter.
Clients and partners perceive an organisation capable of lucidity and adaptation — one that leads with both intelligence and empathy.
👉 Measuring is not about control. It’s about care.
Listening is the new form of risk management.
3️⃣ Turn Resilience into Competitive Advantage
Better anticipation means faster reaction times and greater agility. It allows an organisation to adjust its products, services or messages before its competitors even notice the shift.
Data from weak signals often feeds innovation, leadership, and strategy. They reveal not only what’s breaking — but what’s about to emerge.
Resilience, when understood this way, becomes a form of strategic foresight.
4️⃣ Make KEIs a Strategic Steering Tool
Integrating Key Emotional Indicators into dashboards enables a dynamic view of risk.
It connects the human and the technical, bringing decision-makers closer to reality.
Boards and executive committees can visualise the living pulse of their ecosystem — the part that spreadsheets can’t show.
👉 What remains unseen ends up surprising you. What gets observed eventually improves.
As the Weak Signals Interpretation to Prevent Strategic Surprises review (Ansoff & Hiltunen) reminds us, weak signals are the raw material of anticipation.
💡 Coming Next on Oz’n’gO
How to turn the listening of weak signals into a genuine governance of resilience —
without falling into surveillance, bureaucracy, or data overload.
Because between control and chaos lies a third path: the conscious organisation.
