I’m not sure if any of you are struggling with making plans for your future right now? I know I am. I had a whole life plan, for my family, for my businesses, for my future—I mean, helping business leaders make plans is what I do. Then Corona Virus hit and now it seems like everything is on hold.

In a house with two combat veterans, my husband and I have discussed how similar this is to a wartime deployment in many ways—we’re stuck in a confined space only leaving the wire when it’s mission essential, we are trying to make plans for the future but then what actually happens gets in the way and everything changes, and we’re constantly wrangling with a terrorist who will not be satisfied with anything that we try to do to appease her (she just happens to be a cute 4-yr-old).

So, for today’s article, I pulled out my intelligence officer hat to talk a little bit about how to make plans to confront an enemy when you really have little to no idea about what is coming next.

1. The Knowledge Matrix

First, let’s talk about what intelligence collection is. If you are a business leader, you are probably familiar with this quadrant, because pretty much everything in intelligence and in business are parallel.

One of the first things you learn about intelligence collection is to live and die by this matrix.

It contains 4 sections: The known knowns, the unknown knowns, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. Figuring out your known knowns is as simple as making lists: brainstorming with your team, your family, or yourself on whatever matter you are trying to figure out. The unknown unknowns refers more to group knowledge or experience—something that you or your organization already have access to, it just has to be discovered or rediscovered. You usually find this when you are listing the knowns and unknowns or doing the research to answer questions.

The known unknowns is where intelligence collection really starts: when we know the most pressing questions, we can set about answering them. Which is easier to answer: “how to entertain a toddler while working from home” or “interactive app games that reinforce literacy”? Obviously, it’s the specific one.

The unknown unknowns is what we refer to as the dark quadrant in intelligence—you can’t actively answer questions that you don’t know you have. For example, no leader of any country had an answer for how to keep their economy afloat when the entire world went into isolation, because there was no scenario where that was possible. One of the best way to address unknown unknowns is to get as many different perspectives and eyes on your plan as possible—other people almost always have a slightly different point of view than you do.

So, to start, whether you are planning for your business, for your family in crisis, or just for yourself and your future, you can draw out this quadrant and get to work filling in the blocks. Trust me, you’ll start to see why it works.

2. Planning is an Exercise

The plan is not the most important thing, ever. It’s making the plan that matters the most in crunch time. In warfare, there is a famous quote: “a good plan never survives contact with the enemy”. In business, I like to say, “a good plan never survives contact with the customer”. So why then do we keep making plans? It’s because it’s the act of planning that takes you through the deliberate process of thinking through possible eventualities and what you will do if they happen.

This is such an accepted concept that in 2012 instead of hanging posters reminding folks in danger zones to prepare for hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters, the US government released official posters warning folks to prepare for the zombie apocalypse. Why? The thinking was that Americans were so ‘into’ zombies, and therefore more likely to prep for that kind of apocalypse, and in doing so, would be prepared for the more likely emergency scenarios. Think about it, if we’d all been prepared for the apocalypse this year, maybe there wouldn’t have been a rush on toilet paper, of all things.

As they say, “fail to plan, plan to fail”. Now is the perfect time to be making plans, thinking through various eventualities, and talking about what you, your family, or your business will do if the worst happens.

3. Most Likely and Most Dangerous Courses of Action

Central in every intelligence brief is the presentation of the most likely and the most dangerous courses of action. What happens is you take the facts, things that are guaranteed to take place, and then you imagine 2 different scenarios: the most likely result and the most dangerous result. Both of these things are then presented to the group doing the planning as considerations. Obviously, we know that the most dangerous probably won’t happen, but it could, and so we think through it, ending up being more prepared for the most likely, most dangerous, or any other of millions of scenarios that could take place instead.

Since military operations can be hard to understand if you’ve never experienced, I’ll explain how I did this when I was a mom alone at home with a young baby while my husband was off at war flying helicopters on dangerous missions and getting shot at every day. My mission was to plan for what I would do when my husband got home, because fact: he would come home one way or the other.

In the most likely scenario, he’ll arrive home one day with a bunch of duffel bags, I’ll take photos while he hugs his baby forever, I’ll wear the same dress I always wear for homecomings since the first time, and I’ll have his favorite meal ready. We’ll open a bottle of wine and have a fantastic evening. These are all things I can prepare for: make lists, go shopping, do laundry, arrange babysitting, etc.

In the most dangerous scenario, I’ll find out he’s coming home for the last time when a black car pulls up to my door and two uniformed officers step out of it. They’ll give me some of the worst news one can ever hope not to hear. I’ll give myself exactly twenty minutes before the horrible reality hits me and grief takes over in a punch to the gut that will take months or years to recover from. In those twenty minutes I’ll send 4 text messages: to my child’s caregiver, my sister, my financial adviser and my mother-in-law. I’ll call my best friend who will immediately get on a plane. The people I’ve texted will begin to arrive at my house before the twenty minutes are over, and also help notify other family members. These people can be briefed ahead of time, documents can be filed in places where they can be found, and I can hug my baby all the time and tell her about how great it will be when daddy comes home, hoping that it will be true. After those twenty minutes are up, I can fall apart, knowing that the things that matter in my life will still be taken care of.

Of course, I don’t know how I would have actually dealt with my husband’s death, and fortunately I never had to find out. But I do know that being prepared helped me to feel safe, to cope with the fear, and to not have to think about it all the time, just during the planning.

Planning can be done in every aspect of our lives and businesses. It’s more important now than ever to take some time to acknowledge that we are in the midst of a crisis the like the modern world has never before seen. Taking the time to acknowledge the knowns and plan for the unknowns can be crucial to our success.

DANIELLA YOUNG IS A TEDX SPEAKER, AN AUTHOR, COMBAT VETERAN, BOARD MEMBER OF OPERATION CODE, & THE CO-FOUNDER OF CAVNESSHR—AN HR-TECH COMPANY WHO’S MISSION IS TO MAKE BIG-BUSINESS HR AVAILABLE TO SMALL BUSINESSES, THROUGH INNOVATIVE SAAS AND VIRTUAL CONSULTING. DANIELLA SPECIALIZES IN HELPING BUSINESSES CREATE CULTURE ROADMAPS, LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PLANS & EFFECT TEAM TRANSFORMATION. WANT TO LEARN MORE? VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT cavnesshr.com.

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