If You See Something, Say Something

A few years back I spent three days in the markets. Omaha. Council Bluffs (a retail store in Iowa if you’re keeping track). Oklahoma City. New Orleans.

We talk constantly about “complexity.” Complexity in our process, our systems, our tools, our strategy. It is an abstract word on a slide.

Then you stand in a retail store and watch a rep field a question from a customer, and the company answer is right there in your head, and it is useless. Because it does not matter to the person across the counter.

That is where complexity stops being a word.

The markets are not the same. Selling Mobile in Nebraska is a different conversation than in Louisiana. What a “reliable network” means shifts with the zip code, the season, and whether anyone extends you empathy for either. Our reps knew all of this long before it reached a strategy document. They live it every day.

Here is what I kept turning over between stores. The people closest to the work see the problem first. They see it. Every time. Whether they say it out loud is the open question.

That part is on leadership.

Pete Blaber, who commanded a Delta Force unit, built The Mission, the Men, and Me around one rule: always listen to the guy on the ground. The command post is comfortable. It is also the worst seat for seeing what is actually happening.

People speak up when someone is listening hard enough to act on it. When you build a room where level heads rule and the loudest, most reactive voice does not win, people bring you the hard thing early, while it is still cheap to fix.

AI is making the work move faster than it ever has, which makes that early signal from the front line worth more than it ever was.

If you see something, say something. That only works if the people above you have made it safe to.

Build the room where it is safe. Then listen like you mean it.