Welcome back to The CP Journal, where we break down what it takes to get left of bang.
Introduction
We’re approaching that time of year when consultants, analysts, media platforms, and organizations begin publishing their predictions about what the next year will bring. The news and our online feeds are about to be full of people telling us which threats are growing, which technologies will change everything, what economic conditions to expect, and which developments should keep us up at night.
Even though some of these predictions will be informed by serious research and thoughtful analysis, much of it will be little more than educated guesses, presented with a level of confidence that suggests the person making them has somehow figured out what the rest of us haven’t.
And there will be plenty of people hoping we’ll react to their predictions. Fear and uncertainty attract attention, and attention is valuable to the people and organizations competing for it.
Even though I’m incredibly skeptical of the prediction business and the supposed prophets who have blessed us with their uncited and consequence-free forecasts, that doesn’t mean we should ignore their predictions about 2027 either. They can provide useful information, introduce possibilities we haven’t considered, and help us question assumptions about what we expect to happen.
The challenge is knowing what to do with them.
Before we can determine whether a prediction should influence our plans, priorities, or investments, we need to understand the environment we’re already operating in. Otherwise, how do we know whether the prediction represents a meaningful change, reinforces something we’ve already observed and is accounted for in our plans, or has little relevance to our organization?
In Briefing #87, I introduced the six elements of the operating environment that we use to recognize and make sense of changes around us. With 2027 approaching, I want to revisit that framework, share what I’m observing across those six elements today, and explore how those observations are influencing my thinking about what comes next.
Understanding the Operating Environment
When I assess the operating environment, I organize my observations around six elements, which, when taken together, provide a way to understand the conditions influencing an organization’s ability to operate, make decisions, and accomplish its objectives.
The six elements are:
Threats & Hazards. The natural, technological, human-caused, and organizational risks that could disrupt operations or cause harm.
Media & Communications. How information is created, shared, interpreted, and amplified, and how that influences the organization and the people it serves.
Resources & Technology. The financial, physical (supplies and equipment), technological, and other resources available.
Community or Customer Expectations. What the people an organization serves need, expect, believe, and increasingly demand from it.
Politics & Policies. The political, legal, regulatory, and policy conditions that influence what an organization can and is expected to do.
Workforce. The people an organization depends on, including their experience, capabilities, availability, and willingness to perform.
These six elements give me a structure for organizing what I’m observing. They also help me recognize when something is changing, rather than evaluating every new development or prediction in isolation.
And there’s value in articulating that baseline before you begin assessing what might come next. For example, imagine reading a prediction that severe weather will become more destructive in 2027. That might be important, but before doing anything with it, I’d want to understand whether the forecast changes what I already believe about the threats facing the communities and organizations I work with.
I’d also have to consider how the other elements are changing alongside this change in severe weather.
Are community expectations increasing?
Have financial pressures reduced the resources available to prepare for, respond to, and recover from weather events?
Are new technologies creating opportunities to improve alert and warning capabilities?
Is the workforce still capable of executing the plans we’ve developed?
The answers to THOSE questions influence whether the prediction warrants attention, what it means for our preparedness, and whether anything needs to change.
But I think the greatest value comes from recognizing how changes in these six elements interact with one another. Consider three developments we’re observing today.
Many organizations are facing increasingly constrained budgets.
At the same time, emerging technologies are making capabilities available that previously required considerable financial resources or specialized expertise.
And those changes are influencing the skills employees need and how work can be accomplished.
Each of those developments is meaningful on its own, but when considered together, they raise an interesting possibility. Three organizations facing similar financial pressures could emerge from this period with very different capabilities.
One might respond to its financial constraints by reducing services, eliminating positions, and accepting diminished capacity.
A second organization might respond by trying to do more with less, maintaining their existing workflows with fewer people, and end up with a burned-out team.
And a third might use the same circumstances as an opportunity to reconsider how work gets done, develop new capabilities, and improve performance.
That difference could become significant over time, and it’s the type of change I’m looking to recognize. It is also where observing the operating environment begins influencing decisions about what capabilities to develop, where to invest limited resources, and how to prepare for what comes next.
In fact, observing the interaction between changing threats, increasing public expectations, financial pressures, and emerging technology played a meaningful role in my decision to create Hazzard. That decision required that we consider what those changes might mean for the organizations we serve, what opportunities they might create, and what we’d need to be capable of doing if we’re going to be able to continue supporting public safety and emergency management teams.
Of course, recognizing a potential opportunity is only the beginning. Like each of you, we will have to determine whether our assessment is accurate and whether we can successfully act on it.
My Assessment Heading Into 2027
For paying subscribers, I’m sharing my current assessment of each of the six elements, drawing on what I’m observing across public safety, local government, critical infrastructure, and the organizations we support through our consulting work.
I’ll explain the changes I’m paying attention to, what I believe they mean for organizational preparedness and performance, and where I think existing assumptions may need to be reconsidered. Then I’ll bring the elements together to examine several of the interactions that I believe could have important implications for how organizations operate in 2027 and beyond.
These are my observations and conclusions, shaped by my experience and the work we’re doing. Your environment may look different, and I expect some readers will reach different conclusions.
But I hope that sharing my assessment gives you a useful starting point for developing your own.