Stress Testing, Time, Compounding Incidents, and More
Profiles in Preparedness #26
Stress reveals who's ready. And it reveals who isn't. Whether in disasters, combat, business, education, healthcare, or countless other settings, challenges expose whether people can do what they said they were going to do. It shows who can deliver what's expected.
It is a lesson I first learned in the Marines, but I'm reminded weekly that you can't wait until a real crisis hits to test your team's (or your own) readiness. A leader’s role isn’t just setting vision, it's building genuine capability before it’s urgently needed. And a capability isn't just about having a plan, but the ability to implement and execute that plan under realistic conditions.
Sometimes readiness and operational stress can be tested through deliberate exercises or simulations. Other times, it emerges in routine projects with tight deadlines and everyday disagreements.
How do team members handle minor conflicts?
Do their actions diverge from their words under pressure?
Does stress reveal someone different than who showed up at the start?
Each of these lets a leader know whether their readiness is real, or if its fragile, and whether they are prepared to operate when pressure peaks.
But applying stress while left of bang can’t be uninformed or arbitrary. Leaders must first ensure people genuinely know how to perform their roles under normal conditions. Only after solid foundations have been built should stress-testing be introduced, helping teams refine their capabilities. Considering stress is not an excuse to overwhelm people them before they're ready.
Ultimately, preparation is about remembering that your reputation isn't shaped by a polished value statement or a flawlessly formatted plan. It's your team's actual behavior, magnified and revealed under pressure, that demonstrates your readiness.
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This Week‘s Reads
Here are a few standout reads from this week with insights, ideas, and perspectives that caught my attention.
Article | “Time is Always on Your Side” — The Lie That Can Get People Killed. The assumption in law enforcement and security that time is always on your side is a comforting thought. As the article describes, "It implies that patience, control, and de-escalation will always win. In certain scenarios—like true barricaded suspects or stable hostage negotiations—taking time may be an asset. But in adversarial situations, where opponents are maneuvering against us, that phrase isn’t just false. It can be lethal." While challenging this platitude and assumption by reminding readers that time is also on the side of our adversaries, it shows that knowing when to move fast or demonstrate tactical patience can be informed by the Baseline + Anomaly = Decision structure. It can help you determine when the "need for action becomes non-negotiable." I thought this article was great - give it a read.
Research | Impacts of Combined Cyberattacks and Extreme Weather On Power Networks. There is an underlying premise to our Watch Office emails that because organizations are more exposed to loss/damage when threats and hazard events occur simultaneously, awareness of the current conditions is critical to proactive responses. The analysis in this study helps quantify that assumption as it shows how when a heatwave occurs (on its own), 0.1% of New York's electric utility customers could be affected by that weather event. It also shows that when a cyberattack occurs (on its own), an outage could affect 4% of customers. But when they occur at the same time? 13% of the utility customer's are impacted. It also showed when those two events happen at the same time, state and local government activity drops by 30%. Concurrent incidents lead to compounding impacts, especially when unprepared to respond. Thanks to Paula Fontana for turning me on to this research.
Article | Navigating Changes in School Security. As schools across the country close in on summer break and begin preparing for the next school year, this article from Paul Timm about changes to be aware of is certainly. It covers new PASS Safety/Security Guidelines, expected ASIS School Security Standards, Alyssa's Law, digital school mapping, cell phone ban debates, and the influence of industry on security tool adoption. While new legislation, standards, and products impact how schools prepare and protect their students and staff, bringing this together into a cohesive strategy will certainly be a focus for many in the year ahead.
Article | WTF is a Market Dislocation? Something that I look for in articles selected for this newsletter are when other industries talk or write about a topic that can improve the decision-making of this audience. This article is one of them, and goes the need to recognize when financial markets get knocked out of whack. I'll leave it to this quote: "When the market’s dislocated, it’s a little like playing in traffic. You can still cross the street… but the signals don’t work, the lights are flashing yellow, and no one’s quite sure who has the right of way. It doesn’t mean you freeze. But it does mean you look both ways twice, and maybe keep a foot on the curb. Because the folks who treat dislocations like business as usual? They’re the ones who get blindsided by an Amazon van doing 70 in the slow lane (to your defense, the new blue electric ones are wicked quiet and kinda blend in)." Know your environment and know how you're monitoring those conditions.
Article | TDIH: Paul Revere's Ride. I'm going to end this week's summary on the lighter side with an article highlighting the 250th anniversary of the ride to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British soldiers were coming to arrest them. Followed by the Battles of Lexington and Concord that began with the "Shot Heard Round the World," these are the stories of America's founding and worth re-telling.
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