Trace the last silence
Almost nothing goes wrong without someone knowing first.
About 25 minutes this week
The practice
Pick one thing that went wrong in the last three months. Work backwards and answer one question: who knew, or half-knew, before it happened — and what made saying it feel not worth it?
Short read
Incidents are rarely a failure of knowledge. They are usually a failure of transmission: someone had a partial signal, weighed the cost of raising it, and decided the cost was higher than the risk. That calculation is the thing you are actually leading. When you find the point where the signal stopped, you are not looking for a person who failed to speak — you are looking at the conditions that made silence the reasonable choice. Reasonable is the key word. People are not being cowardly; they are being accurate about their environment.
Silence Trace
A simple backward map: event → who knew → what stopped it → what it would have cost them to speak.
Optional depth
Not required to complete the week — read it only if you want more on this.
12 Rules That Turn Managers Into True Safety LeadersListicle · 24 pages Download
Reflection
At the point the signal stopped — was speaking up genuinely the easier option? Be honest.
Follow your organization's own reporting policy. This program is about the conditions around reporting, not a substitute for it — it is organizational and communication content, not clinical guidance.