A Historic Birthday, Celebrating Readiness, True Fans, Turning Pro, and More.
Profiles in Preparedness #48
Welcome back to The CP Journal, where we break down what it takes to get left of bang.
Tomorrow, Monday, November 10th, the Marine Corps celebrates its 250th birthday.
For the uninitiated, the Marine Corps Birthday is a tradition that celebrates both an organization older than the United States and the people who choose to become part of it.
Whether Marines are at home or deployed, the birthday celebration happens every year. A cake-cutting ceremony brings together the oldest and youngest Marines present, honoring the passing of knowledge and experience from one generation to the next. The Commandant’s birthday message is read aloud.
It’s a moment to acknowledge—as this year’s birthday video opens with—that “We know the future will not be the same, but the one thing that will always remain is the Marine.”
That kind of intentional celebration offers a model for any organization that wants to stay ready for what’s next.
While we’ve written before about how it can be hard to celebrate preparedness if it is done in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, it is different when you are reflecting on your successes throughout the year and your organization’s history.
Celebrating your readiness helps you attract the type of people who will commit to the work needed to turn your organization’s operational vision into a reality.
But traditions like this don’t happen by accident. It requires constant leadership until it becomes a part of your culture. Videos celebrating readiness and performance don’t happen without carving out the time and resources to do it on a schedule.
If you want preparedness to endure beyond a single project, it has to be led with the same consistency that makes the Marine Corps birthday inevitable.
So if you need an example of how to celebrate both the person and the organization, or if you’re looking for motivation to sprint a 10k, watch this year’s birthday video.
To all my fellow Marines—Semper Fi and Happy Birthday.
Inside The CP Journal
Here is an article that we added to the site this week.
We like to imagine that good decisions come from clarity—that if we analyze long enough or gather enough data, the “right” choice will eventually reveal itself. But that illusion of certainty is what slows leaders down. It’s what keeps them reactive, waiting for perfect information instead of building it. The reality is, you’ll never have complete visibility.
🔒This article, part of our bi-weekly left of bang leadership essays for paying subscribers, reframes how we think about decisions—shifting from viewing them as final “conclusions” to treating them as hypotheses that help us test and deepen our understanding of the operating environment.
This Week‘s Reads
Here are a few standout reads from this week with insights, ideas, and perspectives that caught my attention.
Article | Building a process culture. What does it cost to be wrong? As Seth Godin writes, “Process is the investment we make in inefficiency now to prevent errors from costing us later.” In this short article, he explores the balance between an organization’s commitment to (or contempt for) process, their creative outputs, reliability, survival, and breakthroughs.
Article | 1,000 True Fans. After chatting with someone just starting her writing journey this week, this is the article I shared. “A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.” Today’s technology makes this simultaneously easier than it has ever been to do, and incredibly difficult, but it helps to form an attainable goal to focus your work. It influenced how we initially designed our business 13 years ago, and it is still applicable to us today.
Book | Turning Pro. This is one of the few books I re-read every year, and I picked it off my shelf this week after referencing it on a podcast. It only took two nights to finish, and it provided an excellent reminder—as it always does—about the difference between the amateur and professional life. More importantly, Steven Pressfield reminds us that turning pro is a choice, and it’s a decision you have to make every single day.
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And if you’re thinking about how to strengthen your organization’s preparedness, that’s what we do. Whether it’s strategy development, assessments, planning, speaking events, or exercises, we help teams build the skills and strategies to stay ahead of the next challenge.