Most organizational failures are not preceded by silence. They are preceded by signals that were present, detectable, and missed. This paper argues that the missing mechanism is not interpretation or resolve but detection itself: the neurological capacity to register weak environmental signals before they strengthen into crises. Drawing on signal detection theory (Green & Swets, 1966), predictive processing (Friston, 2010), and the neuroscience of prediction error (Schultz, 2016), we propose that sustained success progressively suppresses leader detection sensitivity (d-prime) through prediction error minimization in dopaminergic systems, producing a perceptual regime in which weak signals are not ignored but genuinely undetected. We introduce TWITCH as a two-dimensional construct: a phenomenological dimension naming the felt signature of a detection event when suppressed prediction error crosses the threshold of conscious awareness, and a dispositional dimension naming the sustained curiosity orientation that counters leader complacency by maintaining the prediction error precision that detection requires. Curiosity is thus formalized as a d-prime restoration mechanism, not a response-bias shift, operating through information-gap activation that preserves attentional aperture against the narrowing that success produces. A three-regime detection typology is developed (Suppressed, Intermittent, and Sustained Detection), two forms of detection event are distinguished (Forced and Cultivated), and four falsifiable propositions are advanced. Implications are developed for leadership theory, executive development, governance, and organizational design. The central practitioner consequence: the most important leadership capacity for navigating disruption is not strategic judgment, but the perceptual sensitivity that precedes it. Keywords: signal detection theory, d-prime, perceptual degradation, prediction error, leader complacency, curiosity, early warning failure, weak signal detection, TWITCH, predictive processing, detection equilibrium, organizational failure
David S Morgan (Thu,) studied this question.