Seeing, Changing, Evacuation Rehearsals, and More
Profiles in Preparedness #60
Welcome back to The CP Journal, where we break down what it takes to get left of bang.
Seeing It Coming Isn’t the Same as Changing It
Do you know the “I told you so” person in your organization?
The one who is always saying they saw the bad thing coming. The one who, after the fact, can clearly explain how the indicators were there all along.
The one who, despite all of that, didn’t change the outcome.
Much of the left of bang approach is focused on situational awareness. And for good reason. If you can’t see something developing—whether it’s a potential attacker, a cascading infrastructure failure, or a strategic shift in your operating environment—there is nothing to do proactively.
Recognition is absolutely a prerequisite, but it isn’t the objective. If you can see something coming but can’t prevent it—or adjust your organization’s posture to absorb it, respond to it, or grow from it—then what exactly did the early recognition buy you?
Situational awareness is an enabling function because it creates the opportunity to act. But it does not, by itself, alter the trajectory. If we are going to shift left of bang, we have to be capable of both seeing early and doing something with the time it gives us.
Many leaders gravitate toward the visionary side of the equation. There’s pride in identifying weak signals, in anticipating threats, in seeing what others don’t. It is work that is interesting and feels differentiated.
But insight only matters if it changes how the organization behaves. It needs to be complemented by the less glamorous work that determines whether those insights actually matter.
Not to comment on the need. Not to explain it. To change it.
That’s true at the tactical level and at the strategic level: insight only matters if it changes how the organization behaves.
Organizations don’t suddenly adapt under pressure, but instead default to their habits and structures. They fall back on whatever behaviors have been reinforced before the moment.
If your budgeting process can’t shift resources quickly, you won’t reposition in time.
If your policies are rigid, you won’t adjust posture.
If your training cycles don’t reflect emerging risks, your people won’t respond differently just because someone “saw it coming.”
The ability to change—specifically to change behavior at scale—is a core left of bang capability since it determines whether awareness translates into action and progress.
But it can’t happen during the crisis. It needs to happen in the projects you choose as priorities, in the way leaders reward initiative (or punish it), and how quickly decisions move from conversation to implementation.
It’s determined by whether your systems are designed to adjust or simply to maintain.
When we talk about left of bang organizations, developing situational awareness is the vital first step. But building the organization that can behave differently because of what it sees is where the harder work lives.
And that’s what keeps you from becoming the person who was right…but irrelevant.
In our core essay this week, we walk through five specific points in any project where leaders can deliberately build this capability into their organization. If this resonates, that’s where to start.
Inside The CP Journal
Here are some of the articles that were added to the site this week.
“The only constant in life is change.” It’s one of those lines that gets repeated so often it stops meaning anything. It sounds thoughtful. It sounds inevitable. But most of the time it just hangs there—detached from any real explanation of what to do about it.
This article goes through five points where project can be improved to drive meaningful behavior change in organizations.
Rehearsals are powerful because they force clarity of action, build shared awareness of what everyone is doing, and give leaders an immediate sense of the readiness across the team.
This article highlights 9 questions organizations can use to rehearse activating their evacuation plans when pre-event thresholds are met.
Before You Go
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Time frames matter. The “I told you so” person almost never attaches a deadline to their prediction, which gives them unlimited runway to eventually claim they were right.
When you’re partnering with prediction-makers, it helps to pin them down to a specific time horizon. Ask: By when? Then align on a follow-up date tied to that window to review what actually happened and decide on next steps. Setting clear time expectations turns vague forecasts into measurable outcomes and makes the conversation more accountable, less emotional, and far more productive.