“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
— Albert Einstein
When was the last time you found yourself preparing for something that has not happened yet?
Why were you thinking about it? Was it fear?
What did you fear? Was it the potential for a significant loss event? Loss or change of what?
How will you prepare in such a way, that it gives you some assurance that the potential loss event will not occur? Or if it does, the outcomes will not be a total catastrophe:
Definition of catastrophe
- 1 : a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter overthrow or ruin.
- 2 : utter failure.
- 3a : a violent and sudden change in a feature of the earth.
- b : a violent usually destructive natural event (such as a supernova).
- 4 : the final event of the dramatic action especially of a tragedy.
How might you prepare proactively with your Team, to alleviate fear and to provide greater confidence of action?
What particular environment are you thinking about right now?
Is it Land, Sea, Air, Space or Cyberspace? Will the Catalyst for the loss event you fear, begin in plain sight? Will you see it or hear it coming? Or could it be silent and invisible?
How will you know when it has started? What indicators or changes might you measure, to give you some early warning?
Your imagination has not been exercised hard enough or long enough. You will be vulnerable and you shall experience loss at some point.
Can you imagine working along side trusted people or colleagues together to imagine your fears? Will you Understand, Decide and Act? As a team…
How might you devote a few hours per week to the people, processes, systems and external events that you fear?
Your proactive strategy will make a difference. A purposeful journey of imagination each week will increase your “Proactive and Predictive Intelligence”.
Now imagine that a person on your particular team is your Catalyst. How will you make “Trust Decisions” to imagine what they might do or how the person will make a mistake? How could the persons actions become the genesis of a real catastrophe?
Wake up. You are vulnerable today. The proactive time and the degree of effort and resources that you devote to your own Operational Risk Management (ORM) shall make all the difference.
Between a life of trusted possibilities or one full of continuous despair…it is your choice.
Onward!
