How We Talk About Risk Is Holding Us Back

The language we use shapes how we see risk. Old terms like shock, event and disruption describe symptoms, not systems. This post explains why resilience needs a new vocabulary. One that captures how stresses build, triggers activate and crises spread through connected supply chains.

Every field has a language that shapes how people think.

Finance has cycles and markets. Medicine has symptoms and causes. In supply chain, for decades, we have spoken in the language of events — delays, shortages, bottlenecks and shocks.

That language worked when disruption was occasional and local. It does not fit the world we operate in now. Today, multiple stresses interact across regions, sectors and systems. Problems emerge from connections, not single points of failure. The old words describe what happened, not how it happened.

To see risk clearly, we need language that captures how risk behaves.

Why language matters

Language defines the boundaries of analysis. It decides where a problem starts and ends.

When we say “an event caused a delay,” we are already simplifying the story. A port closure is not just a port issue. It sits inside a web of dependencies. It links to energy costs, labour availability, credit terms and customer expectations. Calling it a “delay” hides the structure that produced it.

This is why resilience starts with vocabulary. It is not about adding jargon. It is about choosing words that make systems visible.

From events to systems

At The Signal House, we use three core terms that replace the language of events: stresses, triggers and crises.

• Stresses are the background pressures that build quietly over time. They can be economic, environmental, political, technological or social. Stresses create fragility.
• Triggers are the thresholds or moments that activate those stresses. Sometimes they are large shocks. More often, they are small shifts that push the system across a tipping point.
• Crises are what emerge when stresses and triggers combine and propagate through the network. They represent a new state, not just a temporary disturbance.

This structure is based on the Stresses → Triggers → Crises (STC) framework, developed by the Cascade Institute and extended by The Signal House for supply chain practice. It replaces incident lists with the logic of dynamic systems.

How new language changes what we see

The old language treats each disruption as isolated. The new one helps us see patterns.

Take a supply shortage. In old terms, it is a single event. In new terms, it is the visible result of deeper stresses — supplier concentration, transport constraints, financing gaps — and a trigger, such as a regulatory change or climate shock, that activates them.

The crisis is not just the shortage. It is the chain of consequences that follow: higher prices, slower recovery, lost trust.

By reframing disruption this way, leaders stop asking “How do we prevent this one thing from happening again?” and start asking “How do we change the structure that made it possible?”

The power of shared language

Resilience succeeds when people share the same mental map. Without that shared vocabulary, signals get lost. Operations talk about delays. Finance talks about cash. Communications talk about perception. Everyone is right, but no one sees the system.

Using the STC language creates a common view. A “stress” in operations may appear as a “cost exposure” in finance or a “reputation risk” in external affairs. With shared terms, these become parts of the same picture.

That shared map allows faster, more aligned decisions. It also builds a living record of how disruption behaves, which improves decision quality over time.

Language as a capability

Developing a new lexicon is not branding. It is capability. It teaches teams to look beyond incidents and toward structure. It shows that resilience is not only about recovery, but about understanding how systems behave.

In practice, this means using consistent terms across dashboards, governance, reviews and reports. It means asking:

• What stresses are building in our system?
• Which triggers could activate them?
• Where would a crisis spread first?

These questions produce better strategy because they focus on structure, not noise.

The takeaway

Resilience begins with language. When we change the words we use, we change what we notice, measure and prepare for.

By shifting from the language of incidents to the language of systems, we build a clearer picture of how risk really behaves, and how to act before the next tipping point.

Book a 30-minute discovery call and we will show how to use the STC framework to map and manage stresses, triggers and crises in your organisation.