Fix It Before It Breaks
Fix the roof while it's sunny — hunt the hidden risk inside every metric that's going great.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 85%
Fix It Before It Breaks is a proactive risk-interrogation practice: when a metric or situation looks great, deliberately ask what could be wrong with it. Seckler applies it across scenarios — a record NPS, a frictionless exec team, a dominant marquee customer, years of hitting targets, a culture award — and surfaces the hidden danger in each. A record NPS might be mismeasured or worse than a competitor's; a frictionless team may be avoiding hard conversations; a beloved anchor customer may distort your product away from your true market; hitting every target may just mean the targets are too low. The unifying question is resilience: how will this hold when things inevitably break?
Origin
Seckler's belief that smart leaders 'fix the roof when it's sunny' comes from repeatedly seeing companies blindsided in downturns after years of good conditions. In the interview it was turned into a game called 'Fix It Before It Breaks,' where the host read out scenarios of things going great and Seckler named the hidden risk in each — demonstrating the habit of interrogating success rather than just celebrating it.
Core principles
- 01Smart leaders fix the roof when it's sunny, not after the storm.
- 02Every positive metric hides a risk worth interrogating.
- 03Good numbers can signal complacency, measurement error, or non-representative wins.
- 04The real test of culture and results is resilience when things break, not how they feel on top.
How to run it
- 1
Name the sunny signal
Identify the metric or situation that currently looks great — record NPS, aligned team, big customer, hit targets, culture award.
- 2
Interrogate the measurement
Ask whether the positive signal is even real — is it measured in a way that could be flattering or misleading?
Pro tip Compare a strong NPS to competitors' scores; a +30 means little if rivals are just as good.
- 3
Check representativeness
Ask whether a win reflects your true target market or a special case that could distort your strategy.
Watch out Over-pivoting the whole company to one beloved, high-revenue customer can leave you with a narrow market.
- 4
Stress-test for resilience
Ask how the result, team, or culture will hold up when conditions get difficult and things inevitably break.
Pro tip Treat 'we hit every target for three years' as a sign the targets may be too low.
In the wild
Asked what to watch for in a team with zero friction, Seckler flagged it as a warning sign: a team that seems overly aligned and cordial is likely avoiding the hard conversations and unspoken disagreements that growth requires.
→ He prescribes getting great ideas on the table, having 'productive heat,' then deciding and aligning quickly even when some disagree.
Asked about the risk of a customer who is both loudest advocate and largest revenue source, Seckler warned that such a customer may not represent your broader market, and over-building for their needs can narrow your addressable market.
→ He advises keeping product decisions aligned to the mission and target segment rather than to one dominant account.
Common mistakes
Celebrating metrics at face value
Taking a record score as pure good news skips the check on whether it's measured well or beating competitors, leaving hidden risk unexamined.
Mistaking calm for health
Assuming a frictionless team or great-feeling culture is strong ignores that resilience only shows when conditions turn difficult.
Is it for you?
Best for
Leadership teams reviewing strong results who want to pre-empt future crises.
Not ideal for
Teams in acute firefighting mode where the break has already happened and needs direct repair.
From the transcript
“smart leaders, they fix the roof when it's sunny. So, you don't just wait until things go wrong.”
“the big question isn't just how great it can feel when you're on top, but how resilient is your culture and the things that you…”
From the episode
Mike Seckler: How to Build a Business That Thrives When Others Fail
Mike Seckler