Two Weak Signals
I was recently talking with an old friend. It was a Sunday afternoon at Ground Control in Paris’s 12th arrondissement, in early July 2026.
We sat outside and talked about the economy, artificial intelligence, training, and businesses. Then he mentioned two words that immediately caught my attention: weak signals.
It took me a few seconds to understand why this concept resonated with me.
Then it came back.
Looking Back – Summer 2026
A few weeks earlier, I was leading the “Advanced Project Management” training course for a major French food industry group.
It was June 2026 in Paris’s 15th arrondissement. Seven managers from a large company were seated on stools around a high table.
Value creation, business cases, predictive and agile strategies: logical and expected topics.
Then came the final session of the second day: an introduction to project risks. I announced that we would begin discussing… weak signals.
Although the participants were a little tired, they immediately sat up straighter. Their attention noticeably increased.
What Is a Weak Signal?
I displayed a series of micro-events observed during a project. Their task was to determine which ones could be considered weak signals—and, more importantly, explain why.
The discussions quickly became lively and soon proved more valuable than the presentation slides themselves.
One participant described a colleague who was attending fewer and fewer meetings. Another mentioned repeated delays from a supplier.
Then one participant suddenly realized that he might have just received a weak signal himself:
“I’ve just received a meeting request from senior management to discuss Project XY…”
At that moment, I understood—or at least this was my interpretation:
we were no longer simply talking about project management.
We were talking about attention: what is changing around us that we have not yet noticed?
In a world where everything is interconnected, we must be able to detect a change in direction within an overwhelming flow of information.
A weak signal means observing, recording, and perhaps anticipating a problem that is slowly taking shape somewhere beyond our immediate field of vision.
And that problem is getting closer.
Learning to Detect Weak Signals
During this session, we explored how to identify small deviations, recognize recurring patterns, and question the robustness of our initial assumptions.
But for a brief moment, we also put the slides aside to observe the world around us and try to identify what truly matters.
Back to Ground Control
Back at Ground Control on that Sunday afternoon…
A friend talks to me about weak signals only a few weeks after this training session.
Could that, in itself, be… a weak signal?
