The Role of Fiction in Getting Left of Bang + a Book Recommendation

Profiles in Preparedness #66

Welcome back to The CP Journal, where we break down what it takes to get left of bang.

At the end of this article, I’m going to recommend The Infernal Tower, a book just published by retired Navy SEAL Adam Karaoguz.

I don’t often recommend specific fiction books. It’s usually easier—and safer—to point to something directly tied to a professional application. A framework. A case study. Something you can take and use immediately.

But this one stuck with me, and it connects more directly to how we think about preparedness than it might seem at first glance. If you want to skip ahead, you can read my review on Amazon.

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One of the most interesting conclusions from the 9/11 Commission was that the failure to prevent the September 11th terrorist attacks was, in part, a failure of imagination.

Maybe that’s true. Maybe imagining that specific scenario more clearly would have made a difference. Maybe it wouldn’t have. I have no idea.

But when you try to operationalize that idea—when you try to turn it into something an organization can actually act on—the problem looks a little different. In practice, the constraint isn’t usually imagination, but a product of resources and priorities.

Every organization operates with limits on time, money, and attention. No one, regardless of their agency’s size, gets to prepare for everything. Which means, at some point, every organization has to answer the same question: If we can’t prepare for everything, what are we going to prioritize?

That question drives a familiar and natural selection process. Risks are identified, and threats and hazards are assessed according to the likelihood/probability they could occur and the consequences/impact of their happening. It is through this process that priority lists are built, and decisions are made about what to invest in.

Organizations go through this process because determining how severe a particular threat or hazard is only the first step to deciding what can actually be addressed. Once everything is laid out, organizations also have to consider whether people and partners are willing to help address it.

Preparedness is almost never a solo effort. It requires coordination across departments, partners, and stakeholders, each with their own priorities and constraints. Leaders know who will show up without hesitation, who will resist, and who will participate—but only up to a point. And even if organizations choose not to talk about this dynamic, it certainly shapes what gets selected.

High-probability, high-consequence risks are easy to pitch to partners. There’s usually alignment across agencies, departments, and teams, and the case for investment makes itself.

High-probability, low-consequence issues get addressed too, as long as the effort is contained and the ask is reasonable.

But low-probability, high-consequence risks are different.

They are harder to explain, harder to justify, and harder to get people to commit to. People are already committed to other things, and if something hasn’t happened before, or hasn’t happened here, the bar for attention shifts higher.

At a certain point, it doesn’t matter how severe the potential consequences are. If it feels too far removed from reality, it gets pushed aside. There is always something more immediate, more visible, more defensible to focus on instead.

This is how many organizations are built to operate. It isn’t because they “lack imagination,” but because they are forced to prioritize within constraints. That isn’t an underhanded critique of bureaucracy or process, but just the reality professionals operate within. Which means the scenarios that require the most imagination are often the least likely to be addressed.

Except in one case.

The Role of Imaginative Individuals

If organizations are structurally biased toward what is visible, proven, and already understood, then the ability to prepare for what isn’t has to come from somewhere else.

In every case I’ve seen where an organization did take low-probability, high-consequence risks seriously, there was always a person behind it. There was someone who was willing to take an idea that didn’t yet have proof behind it and push it forward anyway. Someone who could see a future that others weren’t spending time on—and wasn’t constrained by the fact that it hadn’t happened before.

But seeing a potential future wasn’t enough either. They also understood how to operate inside the organization, knew who needed to be involved, what objections would come up, and how to make the case in a way that didn’t feel abstract or speculative. They could take something that sounded unlikely and translate it into something that felt real enough to act on.

But it raises a practical question: where does that initial insight come from?

For some people, it’s natural. They have always thought that way.

But for others, it has to be developed. And that’s where something like fiction starts to matter more than some people give it credit for.

Why Fiction Matters More Than It Seems

A lot of professional development stays inside what has already happened. Case studies, after-action reports, and lessons learned are all grounded in reality, which is useful, but is also limiting. Those tools reinforce the boundary present in organizations that routinely only get better at what has already been experienced.

Fiction, on the other hand, operates differently.

Fiction expands the set of scenarios we’re willing to take seriously. It introduces environments, decisions, and consequences that force a reader to think through ambiguity, tradeoffs, and second and third-order effects without the benefit of hindsight.

And just as important, fiction develops how you think about people. The best fiction isn’t driven just by plot, but by the characters inside the story. How individuals make decisions under pressure, interpret incomplete information, influence others, and justify those choices to themselves and others.

That’s the same terrain that leaders operate in.

Reading fiction expands what feels possible, which changes what you’re willing to take seriously. Before you can convince anyone else to prepare for a specific threat or hazard, to develop new capabilities, or to shift the way an organization operates, you have to see it clearly enough yourself.

Recommendation | The Infernal Tower

That’s why I’m recommending The Infernal Tower, by Adam Karaoguz.

It’s a fast-moving, high-consequence story built around a selection process to lead a foundation developing world-changing technology. When that process is compromised, the environment shifts quickly—forcing the characters to navigate uncertainty, pressure, and competing priorities in ways that feel grounded, rather than exaggerated.

What stood out to me wasn’t just the pace of the story, but the way the characters operate inside of it. They aren’t caricatures that get dismissed as unrelatable. They make decisions with incomplete information, they misread situations and adjust. They influence each other in ways that feel familiar if you’ve spent time inside organizations.

Beyond the entertainment, that is what makes the book so engaging. It is exposure to how people think and act when conditions change faster than expected.

One of the reasons why I recommend this book is because this kind of thinking didn’t happen by accident. Adam has a level of intentionality behind how those characters are built, which is incredibly impressive.

In an article he shared last fall, he described the “Character Rose”, which is a framework he uses to develop different personality types and archetypes. It is a structured way of thinking about how people behave, how they differ, and how those differences play out under pressure.

This level of detail is the result of someone paying close attention to human behavior—and then building a way to make sense of it. This is the same thing we’re always working towards when it comes to getting left of bang.

I think you should give it a read.

In Closing

If imagination is required to prepare for what hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t develop on its own. It has to be built.

Fiction is one way to do that. Certainly not the only way, but in my experience, an incredibly useful way.

And if you’re in a position where you’re trying to get others to take something seriously before it becomes obvious, it’s worth paying attention to anything that sharpens how you see those possibilities.

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Before You Go

If this article helped you see your organization more clearly, share it. If this sparked an idea, pass it along to someone responsible for getting left of bang. That’s how this work spreads.

If you want to go deeper, a paid subscription gives you access to advanced courses, playbooks, and exclusive leadership writing.

And if you’re asking the question many leaders eventually face—are we actually becoming more prepared, or just busier?—the first step is a Left of Bang Strategic Briefing, where we help you identify where your organization is today, where gaps exist, and what that means for your ability to perform when it matters.