Part of "The Missing KPI" series...

“I Didn’t See It Coming” Is Not a Strategy

Why surprise signals an instrumentation gap, not a leadership lapse

Most leaders do not ignore people problems. They discover them too late.

When leaders say “I didn’t see it coming”, they are rarely describing a lack of care or attention. They are describing the absence of a timely signal - the same missing KPI that allows people risk to remain invisible until it has already materialised. Surprise in this context is not neutral. It is evidence that emotional reality crossed a threshold before leadership had visibility.

This is not a failure of intent. It is a failure of instrumentation.

Surprise is an outcome produced by system design

When organisations are surprised by people outcomes, the instinct is often to look for individual breakdown.

A signal was missed.
An issue was not escalated.
Information was not joined up.

In practice, surprise is almost always produced by the system itself.

Most people measurement systems are designed to prioritise reassurance. Data is aggregated. Volatility is smoothed. Language is moderated. What reaches senior leadership is a stabilised version of reality, optimised for reporting rather than early warning. As a result, something can be formally measured and still arrive as a shock.

The issue is not awareness. It is that the system was never designed to surface early movement.

When reassurance is prioritised, risk accumulates unseen

Traditional people metrics tend to answer safe governance questions.

Are things broadly stable?
Are engagement scores holding?
Is there material deviation since the last cycle?

What they struggle to show is direction.

Early risk rarely appears at scale. It emerges unevenly, in specific teams, roles, or emotionally charged language that does not yet register statistically. Because these signals lack volume, they are easy to discount.

This is how people risk develops - incrementally, then visibly.

By the time data is strong enough to command attention, the underlying issue has usually been present for some time. Surprise occurs not because nothing was happening, but because visibility arrived after the point of low-cost intervention.

Surprise forces reactive rather than controlled response

When leaders are caught off guard, response is necessarily reactive.

Decisions accelerate.
Communication tightens.
Interventions feel abrupt.

Even appropriate action can appear heavy-handed when taken late, because options are narrower and consequences are higher.

This dynamic erodes confidence over time -both in leadership decision-making and in the organisation’s ability to manage people risk predictably.  Repeated surprise is not just disruptive. It is destabilising.

Normalising surprise weakens accountability

There is a second-order effect when surprise becomes routine. Responsibility subtly shifts away from systems and towards events. Problems are framed as sudden developments rather than gradual exposures. Attention focuses on managing what has surfaced, not on why it was not visible earlier.

This creates a governance blind spot.

If surprise is treated as inevitable, there is little incentive to improve early detection. Organisations remain dependent on lagging indicators and become accustomed to managing consequences rather than preventing them. Over time, “I didn’t see it coming” becomes an explanation rather than a trigger for systemic change.

Strategy is defined by what is seen early

Strategy is not demonstrated by how organisations respond once issues are undeniable. It is demonstrated by what leadership can see early enough to act while control still exists. In people-led environments, early indicators are emotional before they are operational.

Frustration precedes disengagement.
Pressure precedes burnout.
Loss of trust precedes loss of performance.

When leadership has early visibility of these shifts, response changes materially. Action is measured rather than corrective. Conversations occur sooner. Risk is managed rather than absorbed.

This is the distinction between reactive leadership and controlled leadership.

Surprise contains information, but too late to be useful

Surprise does reveal something important. It signals that material change occurred outside leadership’s line of sight.

However, information that arrives at the point of surprise has already lost most of its strategic value.  The objective is not to eliminate surprise entirely. It is to stop relying on it as a primary signal. This is why organisations are increasingly exploring simpler, more regular indicators of emotional reality, not as sentiment analysis, but as early risk visibility. Approaches such as EHS reflect this shift: treating how people feel as an operational input rather than a retrospective explanation.

Not to replace judgement. But to inform it earlier.

From explanation to governance

When boards and executive teams treat “I didn’t see it coming” as feedback on system design rather than individual performance, governance questions change.

What shifts first when conditions deteriorate?
What do we see early and what do we only see late?
Where are we relying on reassurance rather than visibility?

These questions mark the transition from post-hoc explanation to strategic oversight.

This essay sits alongside The Missing KPI in examining why people risk is so often identified after it has already crystallised.

Together, they argue for a reframing of emotional reality, not as a soft indicator, but as an early risk signal that enables leadership and boards to act while there is still time to do so deliberately.