Illusions of Capability, Distractions, Assessing Military Readiness & More
Profiles in Preparedness #51
Welcome back to The CP Journal, where we break down what it takes to get left of bang.
In last week’s newsletter, I wrote about the risks organizations face when they fail to invest in readiness, not just operationally, but culturally.
This week, I want to take that conversation one step further.
One of the most common struggles I see in organizations preparing themselves is the lack of a clear rationale for choosing projects that actually matter—those that move the organization forward—versus projects that can wait or will quietly consume time and resources without improving performance.
That challenge becomes even harder when readiness is treated as something vague and something we’ll “know when we see it.” In those conditions, decisions about capability are driven by assumption, familiarity, or possession of things rather than evidence of proficiency.
We are often meticulous in how we study our adversaries, competitors, and external threats, and we can break down their strengths, weaknesses, and likely courses of action. Yet many organizations struggle to apply that same discipline inward. Teams, tools, plans, and processes exist, but their actual ability to perform under realistic conditions and to a defined standard remains largely unexamined.
We published a new article this week, Beyond the Illusion of Capability, to close that gap. It introduces a structured way to break a capability into its component parts. It shows how to assess a baseline performance and evaluate whether the ability to do something actually holds up against the environment you expect to operate in (not just the one you wish you had).
We originally shared the article with paid subscribers earlier in the week, but after several conversations, we decided to make it publicly available. The issue it addresses shows up everywhere, and because leaders across sectors are wrestling with the same questions about focus, tradeoffs, and readiness.
The “fog of war” is often described as uncertainty created by the enemy, the environment, and even our own forces. While we cannot control what our adversaries or competition choose to do, and we can only influence our environment to a limited degree, how we prepare and build our own abilities is the one thing that is fully within our control.
This article is about replacing assumptions with clarity and using that clarity to make better decisions in preparation for an uncertain future. We hope it helps provide a meaningful way forward.
Inside The CP Journal
Here is the article that we added to the site this week.
This Week‘s Reads
Here are a few standout reads from this week with insights, ideas, and perspectives that caught my attention.
Article | Modern Work Is Hostile To Thinking. For many people I know, a workday is a never-ending series of interruptions and distractions in the form of emails, pings on chat, texts, and meetings. It was certainly my reality before deciding to make some changes. But what is the cost of that? This article looks at the three factors that govern your work day: interruption load (how often your attention is pulled away), context drag (how long it takes to fully recover from the interruption), and depth threshold (how long you personally need to actually do real work). When you look at them together, it becomes immediately apparent that a lack of attention isn’t some sort of moral failing; it is an outcome influenced by our internal work environment (a concept executives should consider when designing their organizations).
Report | The Fundamentals of Military Readiness. This report was written to educate members of Congress about what “military readiness” entails. I came across this report a couple of years ago, but went back through it while writing the Illusion of Capability article and drafting a future article. If you’re interested in understanding how large organizations think about their readiness process—both what works and what doesn’t—this report illustrates a few key concepts and definitions.
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The Tactical Analysis Course & behavioral analysis practice exercises from the book Left of Bang.
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Exclusive “left of bang leadership” articles, sent out twice a month.
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.