Detect threats. Assess the risk they represent, based on our own vulnerabilities. Respond to avoid or mitigate any negative effects of the risk. Learn so that we are well prepared if the risk reappears.

we do have dominion over ten key dimensions that we can adjust at any given time to take control over our response: communication, narrative, structure, technology, diversity, bias, action, timing, adaptability, and leadership.

Petrov also considered the fact that the blaring “missile strike” warnings were coming from a single source: Soviet satellites. For the threat to be authentic, Soviet ground-based radars, while slower to detect an attack than satellites, should have been serving as a second source confirmation—but they remained silent. Finally, Petrov remembered th

Your Turn Does your organization’s structure function as envisioned? Does it help your team achieve its goals? Where is power located in your organization? Who benefits from being close to this power? Where in your structure is responsibility for risk? Is this responsibility understood and respected? The Bottom Line Structure enables or inhibits th

Effective action begins when we overcome inertia. It demands recognition of the need to act and the courage to take the step—absent that, inertia rules. Once in motion, we must constantly surveil our actions to determine if they are contextually appropriate, or if their intended effect backfires.

SYMPTOMS OF ADAPTABILITY STRUGGLES Two Beats Behind. Teams that do not adapt lag their more agile competitors—with predictable results. Frozen by Fear of Failure. Frightened by the specter of failure (or accepting responsibility for an adaptation that didn’t work), leaders and their organizations remain unchanged as failure overwhelms them. Superch

To bolster their defenses against risk, organizations should encourage their teams to incorporate fusion cells, ensuring that people with different roles and bodies of knowledge are involved in key decision-making processes and sharing information.

We tend to look for leaders to provide something few ever really could—salvation from the things that threaten us. But the more constructive analysis would be to acknowledge that the real requirement in the people who lead us is not status but actual leadership, or the ability to effectively oversee the multidimensional Risk Control Factors—to turn

Unable or unwilling to calibrate for important factors like communication, structure, and bias, we remain vulnerable to threats.