Canaries in a coal mine: are you listening?

Maybe you heard the expression before, but in case you didn't or can use a refresh, here's a brief historical recap.

In the booming days of coal mining, between the end of 19th and early 20th century, miners faced death danger because of toxic gases that could build up and go unnoticed until it was too late. Then the industry eventually learned a practice to act as an early warning: to take canaries along into the mines.

That's because canaries are more sensitive than humans to toxic gases, so if the birds showed distressed or even died, it would indicate the air quality was unsafe and miners needed to evacuate immediately.

These days, then, the expression "canaries in a coal mine" is a historical-based metaphorically used figure to describe an early warning of potential danger.

So, are you listening to the "canaries in your coal mine"? To claim a solid yes to that, you may need to reframe situations like:

• You have a team member that's constantly complaining about certain things. Maybe they are not doing that to annoy anyone but because they are seeing risks that others aren't just yet, for being somehow more sensitive to them.

• Your product is constantly getting feedback, some of that is not positive, and that can get you triggered, perhaps even frustrated. Is that really always a bad thing, though?! Would you trade that off with having customers that just don't even care enough about to say anything? Maybe your most vocal customers can rather become a true asset if they are acting in ways that give you early insight on things that need dealing with.

• There will always be people that (try to) speak up within organizations about things which they perceive as broken. They often don't do that to be a "pain…", but because they genuinely care.

I happen to have had that conversation recently, where I made use of the expression by saying (something like this):

I'm rather have some canaries in the coal mine (implying that rather being surrounded by people that just loook like committed and going with the flow, to then learn later on they were just keeping too much to themselves, building up frustration, and stuff like that…)

There has been some reporting on a phenomena called "silent quitting". I think some of it has to do with organizations not being careful enough in nurturing their "canaries in their coal mines", so eventually some people give up and start doing bare minimum.

At risk of stating the obvious, but worth repeating, obviously reality is messy and truly are situations where all the above cases of possible need to reframe has a much simpler explanation:

It's always easier criticize than help to construct. And there will always be people with a tendency for looking at and emphasizing the bad things. So, as often is the case, we need to some balance here.

To end on a "tongue-in-cheek" mode, in a Friyay mode, here's a meme version that resonates to me and that perhaps too often happens, and that I would largely credit for lack of "canaries in a coal mine": what I like to call the infamous "consultant meme".

By Rodrigo Sperb, feel free to connect, I'm happy to engage and interact. If I can be of further utility to you or your organization in getting better at working with product development, I am available for part-time advisory, consulting or contract-based engagements.