Budget Shortfalls, Flood Alerts, Drones in the Attack & More
Profiles in Preparedness #36
Budget cuts?
Welcome to the club!
Everyone’s facing them. Complaining won’t bring the money back, and “doing more with less” only works until something critical gets missed.
If the budget’s shrinking, the work has to be sharper.
The problem? Too often, organizations hand their security, emergency management, or public safety agencies a patchwork of tasks and gear during “blue sky” days that are disconnected from the bigger mission.
Then, when the pressure hits, they hope it all somehow lines up with what’s really needed. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
The leaders who will come out ahead are the ones who stop trying to do more things with less, and start making sure every resource, tactic, and objective actually matters.
Getting started is actually pretty straightforward. There are three levers worth pulling to actually move the needle.
👉A forward-looking/left of bang strategy. Not a plan on paper, but a clear bid for success that anticipates potential future scenarios and defines how you’ll be ready for them.
👉A capability assessment. A disciplined process to see your organization as it truly is, recognize strengths, and expose gaps before they hurt you.
👉A management structure. A system that connects your strategy to your spending so every dollar is working toward your priorities.
Tightening budgets in today’s complex environment isn't a reason to retreat — they’re a reason to get sharper.
Legacy approaches that aren’t tied directly to organizational strategy are a dead end. Your teams want clarity, your leadership wants results, and both are possible when someone takes ownership of the plan.
If that someone’s you, the budget may stay tight, but the organization’s readiness won’t.
Inside The CP Journal
Here are some of the articles that were added to the site this week.
Documenting your decision-making clearly and immediately when Watch Points or Action Points are reached provides many critical benefits to your organization.
🔒This article for Paid Subscribers outlines the critical information needed to track decisions, get beyond a blurred recollection of events, and grow from one incident to the next.
What do I have in common with Joe Navarro, Dave Grossman, and Terry Vaughan? We’ve all endorsed the book Surviving Violence by Nikki Burgett.
Nikki is not just a theorist or commentator. She has lived violence and she’s an active practitioner in prevention. Her lessons are worth the read.
Starting a new project is exciting. The vision is fresh, the team is aligned, and energy is high. Yet every experienced project leader knows there will be moments when attention shifts and competing priorities emerge. The challenge isn’t to prevent those moments—it’s to ensure the project keeps advancing through them.
By asking three specific questions on day one, you give your project the focus and resilience it needs to move steadily from kickoff to completion.
This Week‘s Reads
Here are a few standout reads from this week with insights, ideas, and perspectives that caught my attention.
Article | Documents reveal Los Angeles County’s meager budget for disaster response. If LA County were a state, it would rank 11th in population—larger than 40 U.S. states and bigger than the country's second- and third-largest counties combined. Yet, as the Washington Post reveals, its disaster management budget is just $15 million, with nearly $4 million coming from federal grants. About $9.2 million goes to salaries, leaving only $5.8 million for systems, technology platforms, supplies, and other readiness needs—most of which are grant-funded. Whether that’s “enough” is a debate for others, but it underscores a reality: even the biggest jurisdictions may operate with far less capacity than the public assumes. It’s also one reason I lean heavily on AI in my consulting work—to help clients maximize preparedness and performance in an environment where resources are limited and expectations are high.
Article | Redefining Shock and Awe. The opening phase of Israel’s Operation Rising Lion offers a stark lesson for leaders in both security and public safety: before you can build a strong defense, you need to understand the offense you’re up against. The attack “redefined what shock and awe can look like in the 21st century,” using surprise and innovation—most notably drone swarms—to overwhelm defenses. In public safety, that same principle applies: offense studies defense to find gaps. If you want to close those gaps, you must anticipate how others might try to exploit them. It’s why the four steps to getting left of bang—recognition, validation, decision-making, and action—are critical to protecting your people and assets before it’s too late.
Article | Is it time to rethink flash flood warnings? When working with clients to define “watch points” and “action points,” one of the hardest questions is: When should we actually care about an alert? Act on every advisory and you risk staff burnout and a “Chicken Little” reputation. Miss the important ones, and you face outcomes like the deadly Kerr County, TX flood. In this article, meteorologist Matt Lanza digs into the data behind flash flood advisories and warnings, asking whether we’re over-warning. While the threshold for “when to care” will vary for each agency or individual, his analysis is a thought-provoking look at how warning fatigue and missed events both shape the real-world effectiveness of our alert systems.
Article | You’ve Been Taught the OODA "Loop" All Wrong. Mark McGrath digs into the often-misunderstood “orientation” stage of the OODA Loop—arguably the most vital part of how we engage with uncertainty. He explores how our orientation shapes what counts as signal versus noise, influenced by everything from culture and genetics to recent experiences and even last night’s sleep. If you're serious about the decisions you make and want to be able to adapt to changing conditions, give the article a read. But as a caution, Mark is a Marine, so if a strong conviction scares you, his newsletter is not for you.
Enjoyed This Issue? Pass It On and Go Deeper.
If this newsletter sparked ideas or challenged your thinking, share it with your network, a colleague, or on social media. Sharing is how we expand the community of professionals committed to getting and staying left of bang.
And if you want to go further, become a paying subscriber for exclusive access to:
Weekly Watch Office situation reports
The Tactical Analysis Course & behavioral analysis practice exercises
The Project Management in Emergency Management Playbook
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.