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There’s a rather chronic sense of deja vu afoot.

Loud whispers across the social sphere. Constant news coverage. A message from the state leaders. There’s a new COVID-19 variant in town and, while nothing is certain, these messages have an eerie familiarity with lockdown messaging of old. We’re not locked down (yet), and might never be. However, it has me asking myself and my team members the following:

If we got locked down tomorrow, would you be ready for it?

If you had to travel home to your family and avoid being stuck somewhere you don’t want to be over the holidays, would you be ready to bounce?

If you had to work from home, would everything be backed up online to avoid disruption?

I have been discussing these prompts as a team to keep us all on our toes and off our heels.

Scenario planning enables us to build more robust and less fragile versions of our systems, even if the seemingly most paranoid scenarios never play out in reality. I wrote about this strategy from the point of view of long-term thinking and safety, too.

Better to be over-prepared and accused of paranoia, than to be cool and calm…just before being caught with your pants down.

How can you better prepare for the scenarios that might never play out?

If you have a question for Marc, upload an audio recording for it to be featured on a later Q&A episode!