Crisis Is Not the Time to Start Reading the Instructions

Humans are creatures of steady state. We love our habits. We polish them like favorite stones and tuck them into our pockets. 

Our daily routines are basically pre-decided actions on autopilot. They work, so we repeat them. Even a rut can be useful. Take the ancient city of Pompei, where wagon ruts can be seen today, still visible deeply carved into the ancient stone. These ruts were extremely helpful, serving as guides for heavy carts, preventing them from sinking or getting stuck, while the large stepping stones they ran between allowed pedestrians to cross streets without stepping in the muck. Predictable grooves can make navigation easier.

Until they don’t.

Because the truth is we rarely practice what to do when the wheel jumps the track. In everyday life, we glide through our well-worn paths until something unexpected snaps us out of them. And when that moment comes, the mind says: “Great. I would love to make the optimal decision.” Crisis replies: “Too bad. You have ten seconds. Good luck.”

Case in point. Over the weekend, I finally crossed off a pandemic bucket-list item and took a survival training course in the woods of Virginia. Do I need to know how to make a fire using a flint starter, cotton balls, and Vaseline? Maybe. Will I ever be stranded in the wilderness with nothing but ChapStick and optimism? Let us hope not. 

But the act of learning it felt strangely familiar. You try, you fail, you spark, you adjust, and eventually something lights. That is scenario practice in its purest form. You build confidence by doing something new and mildly uncomfortable long before you actually need it.

It’s the same reason athletes run drills. They don’t wait until game day to figure out how to pass under pressure or take a shot with five seconds on the clock. They rehearse those exact situations over and over not because they enjoy the repetition, but because they want instinct to take over when nerves are high. The scoreboard is not the time to think. It’s the time to act on training. Scenario practice gives leaders the same edge: experience before exposure.

Unfortunately, most adults never get this type of rehearsal outside of the occasional office fire drill. We shuffle outdoors, chat about lunch, and then return to steady state. That is hardly a decision-forging crucible.

This is why scenarios matter.

Scenarios are intentional stories designed to pull us out of steady state and place us into situations we have never experienced. They create discomfort on purpose. They force us to explore paths that do not exist yet. They give us the luxury of time to think through choices when real life will not.

A good scenario is cognitive CrossFit. It builds muscle memory for actions we have not taken and decisions we have not faced. When a crisis finally hits, we are not standing there fumbling with the mental equivalent of a flint starter. We have already practiced. We know how hard to strike and where to aim the spark.

Think of it like GPS. There may be twenty possible routes to your destination. The GPS does not hand you twenty. It politely says: here are three. One is fastest. One avoids traffic. One passes your favorite coffee shop.

Scenarios serve the same purpose in crisis planning. They reveal the landscape of possibilities so leaders can choose wisely in advance. They allow teams to debate, experiment, optimize, and even fail while the stakes are imaginary. Later, when reality gets loud and the countdown clock starts, people are ready. The brain reaches for the pathways it has traveled before. It recognizes the terrain. It moves with purpose.

Scenarios do not predict the future. They prepare people to navigate it.

We rehearse so that when the moment comes, we will not be inventing our response in real time. We will be activating the muscle memory we built by practicing the unfamiliar. We will not waste precious minutes exploring twenty paths. We will know the best three. And we will know which one to take.

In other words, scenario planning is our way of carving tomorrow’s ruts before the wagons ever arrive.