Institutionalizing the Edge

How rebuilding Combat Hunter shaped the philosophy behind Left of Bang

How I became a Combat Hunter instructor isn’t a story I’ve told before—at least not in writing.

When the Combat Hunter program was first developed, different elements of the course were taught by the civilian contractors who had helped build it. As we describe in Left of Bang, the course was built around three primary pillars, developed by different experts and brought together to improve how Marines observed their environment, made decisions, and acted proactively. It was a meaningful advancement in how we prepared deploying units.

By the time I joined the program in 2010, two of those pillars had already transitioned to Marine-led instruction. The third—the behavioral profiling portion—was still being taught by the original contractor, who supported existing classes and curriculum, as well as new courses being developed.

Then, for reasons unknown to us, the contractor who taught the behavioral profiling curriculum was no longer associated with the program.

Jason Riley, my co-author, and I were Captains at the time and serving as Officers-in-Charge of our training teams. We were called into our Company Commander’s office and told that the contractor wasn’t going to be able support a new train-the-trainer course we were preparing for or our other classes. To us, the reason for the change wasn’t important, but the effect on our ability to deliver the course was.

There was no transition plan. No train-the-trainer package. No instructor guides. No formal lesson plans. Half of the instruction existed largely in someone’s head. We were less than two weeks from running another course, and at that moment, we had two options: we could report that the unit was mission incapable and suspend the program.

Or we could rebuild it.

Stopping wasn’t really an option. Marines were deploying and the course was making a difference. None of us were prepared to look a deploying Marine in the eye and say, “Sorry, the course no longer exists.”

So we rebuilt the curriculum. It was that simple.

Rebuilding From Nothing

Despite the program having run for several years, there was very little to inherit. We had some slide decks and notes from previous classes. We had access to the books and research that informed the original six domains, but that was it.

Unfortunately, no comprehensive lesson plans had been developed. No instructor development pipeline existed. There were no standardized student materials.

What had been effective instruction was not yet written down or published in a way that created an institutionalized capability.

As a result, we re-researched everything. We rebuilt the curriculum from the ground up, developed presentations, instructor guides and supporting materials for current instructors and so that future instructors wouldn’t have to reverse-engineer the concepts the way we did. We created student handouts and structured exercises that hadn’t existed before. We also refined concepts to align with published research to ensure that the material we were teaching wasn’t based on personal anecdotes, but on sources that students could themselves go and read.

Jason and I stepped into the instructor role ourselves, not because that was our intention or in our job description, but because it was where the mission required us.

In the Marine Corps, every operation has a Main Effort and a Supporting Effort. The Main Effort carries the decisive action. The Supporting Effort exists to make the Main Effort successful. As a training element, we were a supporting effort with a simple purpose: improve the readiness of deploying units.

The decision wasn’t about ownership or authorship or recognition. It was our contribution because a capability that depends on a single individual is fragile. If it cannot be transferred, taught, and scaled, it is not yet durable.

Why Left of Bang Was Written

Looking back, had the material already existed in a durable, transferable form, Left of Bang likely would never have been written.

The act of rebuilding forced depth because we couldn’t rely on someone else’s delivery. We had to understand the concepts well enough to teach them, defend them, adapt them, and institutionalize them. Additionally, we had to ensure that the program continued under Marine instruction going forward, just like the other pillars of the Combat Hunter program.

And once the material was institutionalized inside a military program, the question naturally followed: should these ideas remain confined there? The answer was no, especially after we got approached about publishing.

The principles were relevant beyond combat deployments and needed to be applied to police officers, security professionals, school administrators, and anyone responsible for protecting others.

If the goal was to support the end user—the person stepping into uncertain environments—then the ideas needed to be even more accessible.

And that realization shaped everything that followed. From the decision to write the book to how it was priced. It shaped the hundreds of free articles we’ve published over the years and the decision to not pursue trademark protection for the phrase “left of bang.” It’s why we donated 10,000 copies of Left of Bang to military units, first-responder units, and other organizations immediately after publishing the book.

If a concept helps people recognize danger sooner and act earlier on the timeline, restricting its use would undermine the very reason it exists.

Build, Don’t Guard

We do not need fewer contributors in violence prevention, behavioral analysis, or operational readiness. We need more.

If I’ve taken any lesson away from my time in the Combat Hunter Program, it’s that there shouldn’t be a bottleneck for ideas that improve survival. So if others write books, build training programs, or develop technology that moves people further left of bang—good.

If the principles of early recognition and proactive action become part of organizational culture—part of how leaders think and how teams operate—then the need for specialized instruction diminishes over time because the capability is already present.

And when that happens, the outcome is simple: fewer lives lost to preventable surprise.

That is the point.