The risks you don’t recognise
In the opening scenes of the film Margin Call, the head of risk management is fired during a round of layoffs. As he’s escorted out, he hands a USB stick to a junior analyst, with a final warning, “Be careful”.
When the analyst finally digs into the data, he discovers the firm is holding a catastrophic level of exposure that no one fully understood.
In complex situations, the signals can be subtle, hidden in data or years of lived experience. The challenge is how to value experience and find ways to pay attention to it in a noisy environment.
Complexity can be invisible
Complexity is often invisible until it breaks. There is a recurring dilemma here: Those with the most experience and deepest insights are often dismissed as “negative” or “resistant to change”.
Technicians manage a level of complexity that is often invisible to others (such as the implications of deviating from the IT architecture or the underlying reason for safety protocols).
They aren’t trying to be "blockers" or stall progress. They simply see the systemic risks and broader implications that others miss. If you want your project to succeed, it pays to take the time to understand their worldview.
It always feels easier to dismiss an "inconvenient truth" than to change your plan. But ignoring a boffin’s warning almost always comes with a big price tag later because they are protecting you from complexity that you might not even be aware of.
Take the Snowy 2 hydro-electric scheme in Australia. A tunnel boring machine called Florence needed a slurry kit to work through soft ground. Because the kit was delayed, the decision was made to crack on without it. The result? The tunnel caved in almost immediately, leading to massive delays and a ballooning price tag.
The heart of the problems is that technical subject matter is often difficult to communicate. If you don’t understand what your technician is saying, you don’t understand the risk you're carrying.
Intent vs. Experience
Sustainable progress usually comes from a healthy conversation between the intent of the strategist and the experience of the technician.
Too much intent: You get grand promises with no results.
Too much experience: You get stagnation where nothing ever changes.
A leader’s job is to find the balance. Start by making your technicians visible:
Turn up with humility and curiosity.
Treat their “complaints” as a signal, not noise.
Work out how to connect their worldview to yours.
Take the time to understand the next level of detail before you pull the trigger.
Understand what’s significant
When complexity is high, not all risks are visible or recorded on a spreadsheet.
Ask yourself:
How much of the operation relies on tacit knowledge of individuals?
What assumptions are we making about what’s “safe” to change?
Who do we rely on to keep the system stable, even if they aren’t the most vocal?
This isn’t about finding a reason to avoid decisions, but a caveat to take the time to see the significance that lurks in the detail.
You don’t need to micromanage the situation, but you do need to understand where the danger lies. Don’t disregard expertise before you realise it was the only thing keeping the lights on.
Ignore the technician at your peril.
