---
title: When bad news stops traveling up | Nobu Sato
description: "Edmondson's psychological safety: speaking up won't be punished. Not atmosphere, but whether bad news travels up. Resignation-proxy data measures its inverse."
image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/psychological-safety-bad-news-en.png
---

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# When bad news stops traveling up

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)

![When bad newsstops traveling up](https://nobusato.jp/hs-fs/hubfs/psychological-safety-bad-news-en.png?width=1200&height=630&name=psychological-safety-bad-news-en.png)

**Series「People Don't Follow the Org Chart」** · Part 13 of 13 · Part 3 · Why people put in effort  
Prologue：[The people who aren't on the org chart](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/people-not-on-the-org-chart?hsLang=en)

A project is going to slip. The front line knew two months ago. Middle management knew a month ago. HQ found out a week before delivery. Nobody lied at any level. Each level just waited a little to see if it could be rescued.

This series has covered thirteen theories, from how people form groups to why they put in effort. This closing post is about the one door every theory has to pass through in the end: whether bad news travels up.

## Not atmosphere, a specific judgment

In 1999 Amy Edmondson studied nursing teams in hospitals and found something counterintuitive: the best-performing teams reported the most medication errors. Not because they made more, but because they dared to report them. She called the phenomenon psychological safety: a shared belief among team members that taking interpersonal risks here is safe, that speaking up about problems, admitting mistakes and dissenting won't be met with humiliation or punishment.

The concept has since been worn thin, often taken to mean "a nice atmosphere" or "everyone gets along." Edmondson herself has corrected this repeatedly: psychological safety is not comfort, it is candor. A team that gets along but where nobody tells the truth has low psychological safety. Nor is it lowered standards: high standards plus high safety makes a learning team; high standards plus low safety makes an anxious team, where bad news gets hidden.

The disputes are about measurement and causality: whether safety is cause or effect, and how strongly it relates to performance, which varies across studies. Its value as a diagnostic variable is not disputed: how fast bad news moves inside an organization is observable.

Front lineT−60 daysMiddleT−30 daysHeadT−10 daysHQT−7 daysDedicated line: three kinds of news gostraight up, no consequences for the reporter

**Fig.1**Bad news waits at every level of the reporting line. The dotted line on the right is designed: three kinds of news skip the filter and reach the head directly.

## Resignation proxies measure its inverse

Japan has a ready-made measurement: resignation proxy services. The top reasons users give are fear of the boss (28.8% in Persol's survey) and having no way to raise it themselves. In en Japan's survey, six in ten users said they wouldn't have used the service if the boss had been approachable. The numbers are in [the resignation-proxy post](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/resignation-proxy-numbers?hsLang=en).

A resignation is the largest piece of bad news one person can deliver. In an organization where even that has to be outsourced for a fee, the small daily bad news, the project is slipping, the customer is unhappy, I don't think this plan works, stopped traveling up long ago. The proxy usage rate is an inverse indicator of psychological safety.

In Japanese organizations this is structurally amplified. The [vertical relationships of the place](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tate-society-and-matrix-management?hsLang=en) create deep dependence on the boss, so the cost of delivering bad news feels large; the "taking a stance has a cost" mechanism from [the neutral-answers post](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-neutral-survey-answers?hsLang=en) is the same thing. It isn't that Japanese people won't speak; the structure makes speaking more expensive than elsewhere.

## The design decision: give bad news a line

Most advice on psychological safety is behavioral: leaders admit their own mistakes first, thank people for bad news, ask questions instead of pronouncing. All useful, but this series' position is that anything that can be written into structure shouldn't depend on behavior. Three things.

One: draw a dedicated line for bad news on the org chart. [When to redraw the org chart](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/dunbar-numbers-redraw-the-org-chart?hsLang=en) said that when adding a middle layer you write down the three kinds of news that must always travel up. Those three bypass the normal reporting line's filter, go straight to the head, and by rule the person reporting bears no consequences.

Two: make "finding the problem" a named output. In the [responsibility module](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/ringelmann-effect-add-people-pull-less?hsLang=en) everyone owns a block with their name on it, and within that block, catching a problem early counts as a result, not a failure. Only when the evaluation form has that column do people report upward.

Three: ask about events, not attitudes. Survey "do you feel the team atmosphere is good" and you get [a pile of neutral answers](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-neutral-survey-answers?hsLang=en). Ask "in the past month, was there one piece of bad news you wanted to raise and didn't" and the answer is yes or no. The share of yes is the organization's psychological safety score.

## Closing the series

Thirteen theories in three parts. How people group: by place, by size, by favors. How structure shapes behavior: distance, communication structure, configuration, gaps, headcount. Why people put in effort: relationship rules, three needs, two sets of factors, the role itself. Every one says the same thing: people don't follow the org chart, but the chart can be drawn so that they want to.

When drawing it, the last check is this one: which line does bad news travel? If that line is open, the problems the other twelve theories point to get found in time. If it's closed, you can design all twelve correctly and still find out a week before delivery.

How to judge in an interview whether a boss can hear bad news is in [Choose your boss, not the company](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/choose-your-boss-not-the-company?hsLang=en). And back to [the prologue](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/people-not-on-the-org-chart?hsLang=en): the people who aren't on the org chart are usually the people bad news reaches first. Find them, and the line has a starting point.

The last piece of bad news in your company: how many days between the front line knowing and the head knowing?

**In this series**  
Previous：[Score the role before you score the person](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/score-the-role-before-the-person?hsLang=en)

---

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## More in this column

- ### [Score the role before you score the person](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/score-the-role-before-the-person?hsLang=en)
  
  Hackman and Oldham score the role itself on five dimensions. A low-scoring role keeps nobody. Score the role before ...
- ### [Pay removes complaints. It doesn't create commitment.](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/herzberg-pay-removes-complaints?hsLang=en)
  
  Herzberg: what causes complaints and what creates commitment are different sets. Pay is hygiene; enough of it buys no ...
- ### [Motivation is a design decision](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/motivation-is-a-design-decision?hsLang=en)
  
  Self-determination theory: autonomy, competence, relatedness. Each maps to a design decision: reporting lines, grade ...

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Nobu Sato

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