This morning I got reminded of something simple.
Real leadership rarely shows up at the front of the line. It shows up at the back.
In IT Ops, that matters because real problems don’t shout. They whisper.
They show up in the person who goes quiet on a call.
They show up in a handover note that feels off.
They show up in the engineer who knows something is wrong but doesn’t want to interrupt.
If nobody makes space for those signals, they don’t disappear. They sit there until they become an incident.
Here’s the catch: most teams don’t miss signals because they don’t care. They miss them because they’re rushing, distracted, and listening only to the loudest voice in the room.
That bias is dangerous.
When people feel safe speaking, you get a clearer signal. Earlier warnings. Cleaner decisions. Shorter incidents.
When they don’t, you get silence. And silence is expensive.
Allan’s Hard Stop
If your culture listens only to the loudest voices, you’re running production without telemetry. And you will pay for it.
A simple habit
Look for the last person.
In meetings, ask the quiet one first.
On incident calls, pause and invite the person who hasn’t spoken.
After the incident, don’t just ask what broke. Ask who saw something but didn’t feel safe enough to say it.
This isn’t about being nice. It’s about being serious.
Next step: in your next meeting, do one thing differently. Ask the last person in the queue what they see before you close the topic. You might be surprised at what you’ve been missing.
Allan
PS: Want the audio version? Listen to the Signal Drop here: [Spotify link]
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