Raise the Standard | Tool 5
The F.E.E.D. Toolkit
Four questions that test whether your organisation is actually learning and four tools you can install this quarter to keep leadership connected to reality.
How to use this
F.E.E.D. is the engine that keeps leadership connected to reality. Answer the four questions first, then pick one tool below, install it properly and let the loop pull the others in behind it. Start with whichever tool answers your weakest G.A.P.E. layer.
Set ASL_CONFIG.graphics.engine to the uploaded image URL.
The four elements
Four questions, answered honestly
Feedback. Speed of signal, leadership listening
If a real signal from the floor started travelling today, how long would it take to reach your leadership team, and in what shape would it arrive?
Engagement. Co-design, frontline participation
When you last changed how the work is done, whose idea was it, and were the people who do that work in the room?
Evidence. Verification, control effectiveness, assurance
Pick the control you are most confident in and name the most recent thing you have actually seen, not been told, that proves it is working.
Development. Learning rhythm, organisational maturity
Is this business learning the same lesson over and over, or does each lesson change the system so the same failure cannot happen the same way twice?
Four tools to install this quarter
Name an owner and a date or it is a wish
Tool one: the direct route
Write one page naming the categories of risk and event that travel to the top raw, fast and unedited: anything with fatal potential, any failure of a critical control, any notifiable event, any worker concern raised twice. Agree it, publish it and honour it. From the day it is written, softening one of those signals is no longer a judgement call. It is a breach of an agreement.
Tool two: you said, we did
Keep a visible list of what was raised and what was done about it, and walk it at the toolbox. This does not need software. It needs a page, a rhythm and a leader willing to say out loud what happened to every item, including the ones where the answer is not yet.
Tool three: the signal rules
Colour only leading indicators and system health against bands set in advance. Serious harm gets one binary light, green at zero and red for any, because averaging harm insults it. Near miss and hazard counts are never coloured and never targeted, trend and comment only. Then interrogate the sites that have gone quiet, not the sites that are reporting.
Tool four: the rhythm
Monthly, one short update leading with what changed and what needs a decision, not activity. Quarterly, a trend analysis landing before the board cycle. Annually, the maturity question: did this organisation move a level on any pillar this year, and what is the evidence?
Set ASL_CONFIG.graphics.signal to the uploaded image URL.
Set ASL_CONFIG.graphics.saidwedid to the uploaded image URL.
One tool, properly, beats four tools announced.
Your read
The individual answers matter less than the disagreement between them. Look at the shortest bar first.
The next step
You now know which station is broken
A loop with one broken station is not a loop. You have found yours and picked the tool that repairs it.
Knowing where the gap sits and having the room to close it are two different problems. Most people finish a worksheet like this with a clear picture, a full diary and no obvious first move.
That is the conversation worth having. Twenty minutes with the Advanced Safety team, looking at what you have just written down and telling you plainly what to do first, whether it is urgent and whether you need help at all.
Twenty minutes. No pitch and no obligation. Bring your worksheet. Most useful if you carry accountability for health and safety in your organisation.
Book at go.advancedsafety.co.nz/book
Advanced Safety Ltd | advancedsafety.co.nz | From Raise the Standard: Why Good Organisations Go Blind and How Leaders Restore Visibility by Matt Jones. This worksheet is a starting version of an instrument Advanced Safety runs in full. It is general guidance, not legal advice.
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