Seeing Threats Sooner, Limits to Awareness, Public Expectations & More
Profiles in Preparedness #56
Welcome back to The CP Journal, where we break down what it takes to get left of bang.
Do you guys offer a train-the-trainer course for the Tactical Analysis Program?
Nope. Never have and never will.
We started the company, and we wrote Left of Bang, because the Marine Corps had a program that was saving lives. It was proving its value to people operating in dangerous environments, but access to that material was limited.
As someone who dealt directly with the consequences of that lack of access, I didn’t think that was acceptable.
So we built The CP Journal to make those ideas, frameworks, and lessons available to anyone who wants to learn how to operate left of bang—without turning them into a gated credential or a proprietary certification pipeline.
It is why we never pursued trademark protection for the phrase “left of bang,” even though we had the opportunity to do so. We love that it’s used widely—sometimes correctly, sometimes less so—because the alternative would be restricting language that helps people think more proactively about threats, hazards, and opportunities.
If you want to teach concepts from the book or adapt elements of the program to develop your team, you don’t need our permission. If you want to raise awareness about what a proactive mindset can do, there shouldn’t be barriers in your way.
It is why we regularly support trainers and instructors behind the scenes—answering questions, pressure-testing interpretations of the concepts, and reviewing slide decks before they’re delivered. We don’t charge individual trainers for that either. It doesn’t take much time, and the upside is that the ideas reach far more people than we ever could on our own.
We take this approach because the need to operate left of bang isn’t limited to acts of violence. It applies just as directly to wildfires, cyberattacks, hurricanes, protests, infrastructure failures, and any other threat or hazard that can disrupt an organization or a community.
That’s a national problem. And it’s not one that any single company—or course—can solve.
We can’t be everywhere, and we don’t want to be. Our role is to lower the barrier to serious thinking about readiness, help people build better judgment before pressure arrives, and support those who are trying to do the same inside their own organizations.
That’s why we keep access open. And it’s also why this newsletter exists.
Each week, it’s an opportunity to explore what operating left of bang actually looks like in practice—where it breaks down, where it works, and what leaders and practitioners can do differently before the moment that forces a decision.
Inside The CP Journal
Here are some of the articles that were added to the site this week.
Situational awareness is not sitting with your back to the wall, keeping your phone in your pocket, or keeping your head on a swivel. Those are habits.
Awareness requires making sense of what you are seeing in the context of what you are responsible for, and deciding whether it deserves attention beyond the moment it was observed.
This article walks through the process of first recognizing, then assessing, and finally acting on the threats, hazards, and opportunities you face in your work.
“Most organizations don’t fail to prevent violence because they don’t care. They fail because they’re forced to make decisions too late, with too little structure, and too much ambiguity.”
This video is a preview of the 45-minute webinar available to Academy subscribers that addresses each of those issues.
Most of the time, the challenges an organization faces in shifting to a proactive, left-of-bang posture don’t reside at the individual level.
They exist at the operational and strategic levels of the organization where capabilities are selected, scoped, and assessed.
🔒 For paid subscribers, this article shows where the left-of-bang concept has been, and where we’re heading, to help practitioners and operators make it part of their organization’s DNA.
This Week‘s Reads
Here are a few standout reads from this week with insights, ideas, and perspectives that caught my attention.
Article | The Barbarian Invasion Behind Your Statistics. We live in an age where we can touch more “data” than ever before—with promises that we’re one great spreadsheet and a CoPilot analysis away from winning and finding our unique advantage. But as the 2008 financial crisis, the fall of Rome, and the way that 18th-century Royal Navy officers were chosen can show us, there aren’t many stats for the intangibles that actually lead to success. A will to fight. A refusal to quit. This great article isn’t anti-data—far from it—but it is about the need to stay humble and skeptical in the face of it.
Article | Texts among officials show confusion about missing campers during the July 4 floods. When people ask what I see changing in the public safety and security fields, I almost always start with the public’s expectations. They are increasing and growing. Articles, like this investigation into the immediate actions taken following last summer’s July 4th floods in Texas, will show what didn’t go as well as it could have. Where there was confusion. Who was informed of what, and when, and how. As organizations look to future-proof their capabilities, public/customer expectations are a good place to start.
Article | AI doesn’t make it much easier to build security startups. “AI is a great amplifier, but it is not a compensator.” This article is about cybersecurity startups, but it could easily be applied to the broader security and public safety industries. AI can help people build new products faster, but it doesn’t change the need for organizations to protect against internally built tools or accelerate the sales cycle. If you’re looking towards tech to improve and advance your capabilities, this article can help show some of the constraints transitioning that vision into reality.
Before You Go
Found this useful? Share it. Passing this along helps grow a community focused on staying left of bang.
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And if you’re working to strengthen organizational preparedness, that’s our work—from strategy and assessments to planning and exercises.
The point about not trademarking "left of bang" stood out - most orgs would've locked that down immediately. But keeping it open makes sense if the real goal is changing how people think about threats rather than building a certification empire. Saw similar tension in cybersec where frameworks that stay proprietary end up limiting adoption across teams that need them most.