Global Negative Atmospherics + Fact Checking + Consequences of Polycrisis + More

Profiles in Preparedness #13

Preparedness is about driving impact. It’s not just about readiness for what might happen, but about influencing change—within our teams, against our adversaries, and across our organizations. But to create the impact we want, we need to understand the kind of change our actions can drive.

While finalizing an article on leading in a volatile world (link below), I revisited The American Crisis by Thomas Paine. One story stood out: during the American Revolution, British heavy-handedness turned potential allies into adversaries, a misstep that shifted and influenced the outcome of the war.

That lesson is a key theme in the articles I'm sharing this week: our actions must reflect the environment we operate in and be in pursuit of our goals. If they aren't, we risk making the same mistake. We risk undermining our chances of success.

With that, here are articles we've written and read this week to help you get left of bang and help you thrive in these volatile times.

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My Writing

Disruption and uncertainty define today’s world, making leadership more critical than ever. Organizations that act decisively will shape the future, while hesitation risks irrelevance.

In my latest article, I highlight how “negative atmospherics” have come to define our global environment and share five strategies leaders can use to navigate this volatility while planning for growth in the year ahead.

Don’t let the pace of change leave you behind—read the full article here:

Leading Through Volatility

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This Week‘s Reads

Here are a few thought-provoking reads (and a show) that caught my attention this week and why I thought they were worth sharing.

Article | As Los Angeles Fires Burn, Residents Turn to Nonprofit Watch Duty. Information is everything during a crisis, and how quickly people access and use it can make a huge difference in life-or-death situations. I was introduced to Watch Duty a few months ago by a friend who volunteers with the nonprofit (and is also a newsletter subscriber!). With many friends and family in the Los Angeles area, I’ve had the app open most of this week, monitoring the fires from afar.

Beyond its life-saving alerts, Watch Duty represents the growing integration of government, private sector, and nonprofit systems to improve situational awareness. This trend is one I expect to see more of in 2025, and it’s worth considering how organizations can combine diverse information sources to enhance decision-making.

Article | Preparing for the Behavioral Consequences of a Polycrisis. With crisis after crisis impacting people, operations, and customers, organizations need to step back and consider the toll of running from one disruption to the next without recovery time. This idea ties closely to the fifth strategy I shared in the article I wrote this week: leaders can’t treat crises as isolated events, thinking, “We just have to get through this one,” because another is always on the horizon.

The cumulative weight of task saturation—real or perceived lack of time, tools, or resources—affects how people work, make decisions, and recover. While discussions around mental health and well-being can carry a stigma, this isn’t about being “soft.” It’s about maintaining operational effectiveness, both during today's crises and in ensuring you have the people and resources you need for the next one operating at their best. This article is a must-read for anyone preparing their teams for the long game of crisis management.

Articles | The rise and fall of "fact-checking" and the Anatomy of a Nuclear Scare. These two articles almost didn't make the cut this week because the topic of fact-checking is political and polarizing (something I often avoid here). But accurate information is critical to decision-making, so while I am not advocating for or against it, being conscious of the sources of information is becoming increasingly critical.

• Article | The rise and fall of "fact-checking." This article from Nate Silver about the changes in Meta's content moderation program contends that fact-checking, while essential, should be an integral part of journalism rather than a separate, potentially politicized entity.

• Note: Meta is pursuing a “community notes” system similar to X.

• Article | Anatomy of a Nuclear Scare. In December, a fake nuclear scare was fueled by elevated radiation readings on an online map and a drone swarm in New York and New Jersey. Social media influencers amplified the scare, accepting the fake data as fact. So even when people do cite their sources, when the underlying source is wrong, inaccurate data can create a panic.

• The point, you need to question the sources of your information, but when time is of the essence, the challenge of determining what is “fact” can eat away at precious minutes. Consider this in the year ahead.

TV Show | La Palma. I really enjoyed watching this short fictional series on Netflix this week. In the context of an imminent volcanic eruption on the Canary Islands threatening a global catastrophe, it highlights the challenges of providing alerts and warnings for “strategic” threats.

When you know something is coming (but don’t know exactly when or where it will occur), it can be hard for public safety professionals and elected officials to warn the people at risk. If they get it wrong, they are the boy who cried wolf, losing the faith and credibility of the public. As a result, you often see people wait for certainty, at which point it is often too late to act.

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Whenever you’re ready, here are three ways I work with clients:

• Consulting Projects and Speaking Events. I help organizations prepare for an uncertain future with a variety of preparedness initiatives and left-of-bang-focused presentations.

• Proactive Threat Recognition Training. Learn how to read the behaviors and establish baselines discussed in the book Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life in our online training courses.

• Subscribe to the Left of Bang Academy: Access the tools and resources needed by emergency management and homeland security professionals to prepare their organizations for future disasters, disruptions, and crises.

If you’d like to learn more and see what is available for your organization, you can reach me at patrick@cp-journal.com or on LinkedIn.