Upcoming Threat Preparedness Webinar: February 25, 2016

February 19, 2016 in Training

We are honored and excited to be included as part of the FBI Citizens Academy Alumni Association’s upcoming Threat Preparedness Webinar Series.  On February 25th, we will be presenting the one-hour webinar, “Getting Left of Bang”.  The purpose of the session will be to share insights on improving situational awareness by applying the skills and concepts written about in the book, “Left of Bang” and taught through our training programs at The CP Journal.

The session is offered complimentary by the Boston Chapter of the FBI Citizens Academy Alumni Association.  They have successfully conducted multiple in-person active shooter/threat workshops in the past are now offering many of their guest speakers through this Threat Preparedness Webinar Series.  Here is some more information on the organization and the web-based series.

All security related professionals in business, education, retail, and healthcare, local, state and federal law enforcement and concerned citizens are welcome to attend this complimentary webinar presented by Patrick Van Horne, co-author of Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life, US Marine and co-founder of The CP Journal.

Here are the details on the event and please don’t hesitate to share this link with others that you feel can benefit from the session.  Thank you, as always, for your continued support for the work that we are doing.

Date: Thursday, February 25, 2016

Time: 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm EST

Cost: Free

Location: Online (web-based, pre-registration required)

Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/896605924886715138

 

The Evolution of the Warrior: Preparing For War

February 5, 2016 in Background Information

 

“Remember that these our allies have not trained their whole lives for war, as we have. They are farmers and merchants, citizen-soldiers of their cities’ militia.”

The Spartan King, Leonidas, in a speech to his officers before the Battle at Thermopylae[1]

This scene from Gates of Fire, a book written by Steven Pressfield about the 300 Spartan warriors who stood up to over two million Persians, came in the final days leading up the seven-day battle at Thermopylae in 480 BC. As I prepared to join the Marines following the September 11th terrorist attack, reading that quote and imagining Leonidas addressing his officers led to the early formation of what became my quintessential definition of what it means to be a professional warrior. Like many others who have served and are serving in the military today, it led to intense study and the pursuit of mastering the science of tactics, the art of strategy and the history of armed conflict. That quote drove me to develop the mental and physical ability to be able to win battles. There was nothing more important than upholding that single standard.

Today, I read the words spoken by Leonidas and realize how simple being a warrior was 2,500 years ago. Back then, it was a matter of deciding if you were going to be a warrior or a merchant or a farmer. Today, not only do warriors have to commit themselves to being a student of combat, but they also have to be the farmers and merchants that Leonidas contrasts the Spartans against. In the days of the Spartans, defeating your adversaries was a fairly simple task of killing them in combat. Today, defeating our adversaries requires that warriors negotiate contracts with local vendors to complete civil affairs projects and advise local farmers on agricultural processes in addition to fighting battles. As we look to create stability, take away enemy safe havens and make terrorist ideologies irrelevant, the service members who make up our military are used as social workers, advisors, and humanitarian aid workers in addition to fighting our country’s battles. Warriors today have been forced to evolve from the warriors of Leonidas’ time because to win today’s wars requires more than simply killing our enemies in combat.

While there will undoubtedly be some who disagree with the way our military is being employed today and add a Continue reading »

Processes Are For Winners: Stop Trying To “CYA”

February 2, 2016 in Applying The Observations

In an article I posted last week, I highlighted a recent presentation I attended where I found myself actually getting angry with the presenter, but what I didn’t explain was why I became so aggravated. While last week’s article was about the need for presenters to establish and exceed expectations in their audience, there was one point in the presenter’s message that has continued to grind on me. The presenter’s message was essentially that following processes and procedures was a way for people to “Cover Your Ass” (CYA) in the pursuit of career self-preservation. After the presentation was over, I found myself wondering how many other people in law enforcement or the security industry think the same way he does. While there were a number of people in the audience who were clearly turned off by the message, I did notice a few people who were nodding their heads, seemingly in agreement, as he was connecting procedural adherence with job protection. This is a problem. Processes aren’t in place so that defensively minded people can pass blame onto others; they exist so that people seeking to make the world better can succeed. Processes are for winners.

Processes exist because, every single time you go through and execute the Continue reading »

CP Journal – January Recap

January 31, 2016 in Updates

Thank you to everyone for the support at the start of 2016.  We often get asked to share some of our experiences from time to time and thought it would be helpful if we compiled some results from January as a way of saying thank you to those that helped us have a great month and also to share some of our experiences with all of you.

Left of Bang Update:

The holiday season brought added attention to the book, “Left of Bang”.  In the month of January, Amazon received 25 reviews of the book.  Thank you to everyone who has let us know they have read the book and for those that have taken the time to review it for others.  We appreciate your support.  Here are a couple of recent excerpts from Amazon reviewers:

“Good book, very interesting. A lot of stuff in it is common sense but it did make me more aware of my surroundings. Highly recommended!” -Verified Purchaser

“Changes your view of the world. All about situational awareness and picking up on potential threats. Awareness is the first step in being your own security.” -Verified Purchaser

“I was introduced to this book… and once I started reading it I was hooked. So much of this book is about communication – this is information that we ALL can use – to diffuse an angry customer, a mad spouse, or an irrational child!  Learn the concepts here – well worth the read.” -Verified Purchaser

You can check out more of the recent reviews by visiting Amazon directly.

CP Journal in the News:

As an organization, we were highlighted on a few websites that are viewed as valuable resources for many in our core client markets.

On January 15th, Tim Barfield Continue reading »

The Consequences of Failing to Deliver on Audience Expectations

January 29, 2016 in Learning About Learning

I was sitting through a presentation recently and almost walked out of the room, which is something that I never do. With the understanding that comes with choosing to speak, present and teach for a living, I know how challenging it can be to design a presentation and how nerve-wracking it can be to face an audience. With that understanding comes empathy for speakers, so the threshold to push me over that edge to want to walk out of the room during a presentation is pretty high.

One of the reasons for my hesitation about staying or going during this particular presentation was because I get asked from time to time if, since I am an instructor, I find myself judging every presentation that I sit through. The answer to that question is, no, absolutely not. If I am sitting in the audience during a presentation, I am there to learn from the speaker, not to be a critic of their work. While I do often think that there are things that speakers could do to drastically improve the quality of their presentation and their delivery, those observations don’t play a role in my decision about whether my time spent in the audience was worthwhile or not. One of the most significant factors that I consider when assessing my “return on investment” for sitting through a presentation is whether or not the speaker met my expectations for the content they delivered. Did I walk out of the room having learned what I believed I would learn walking into the room? While great presentations exceed your expectations, the ones that fail to meet the minimum of expectations are the ones that leave you disillusioned.

What I will cover in this article is, firstly, the reason why I almost walked out of this recent talk so that I can provide a concrete example that leads into the second part of the article. The second half of the article will look at some things that instructors and presenters can do to shape, deliver upon and exceed the expectations that their audience has.

The Talk

The particular presentation noted above was about the lessons that were learned in the aftermath of a well-known mass shooting, and was presented by a person who was on the ground in an organization involved in the incident, so it had the makings for what should have been a great talk. The invitation to the talk was Continue reading »

“Left of Bang” Presentation at 2015 WINx Conference

January 27, 2016 in Background Information

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Last November I had the opportunity to join eight other presenters on stage at the inaugural WINx Conference outside of Chicago.  Here is the newly released video of my 16-minute long talk about what it takes for our nation’s protectors to get and stay left of bang.

In case you want to read a transcript of the talk instead, here it is.

Transcript
Despite improvements in technology and equipment, the number of police officers getting killed every year continues to rise. And with every officer ambushed and every memorial service we go to, we’re reminded not only about the complexity that this type of threat presents, but also how unique of a problem it really is. Policing is a naturally, inherently dangerous job. If officers safety was truly the most important or highest priority thing that we did, police officers would never leave the station. There’s naturally a lot more risks faced on the streets than there ever would be inside of the safety of a secured building. But if we are going to prevent the next 9/11, if we are going to prevent the next Paris, the next Aurora, Colorado, the next Virginia Tech, the next Newtown, we have to accept the fact that officer safety is a priority, but it comes second to actually protecting and serving the American citizens that we are tasked with overseeing.

 

And when we take a look at what that really means, and as we accept that statement as just the reality, it doesn’t mean that we go about and we look at officer safety in a negligent or naive way. It doesn’t mean that we don’t do everything possible to reduce the risks that a police officer faces while interacting with the population, while serving warrants, or even while off duty. The simple question is, “How do we do that? How do we protect our nation’s protectors?”

Continue reading »

Everywhere You Go There are Groups

January 22, 2016 in Assessing Groups

I recently posted a piece that outlined the four pillars of observable behavior (individual, groups, the environment, and the collective mood) and walked through how to break down the first pillar, the individual, in your everyday life.  In this post I will tackle the second pillar, groups, pointing out how often you come in contact with them and how to ensure your own confidence in personal group situations you find yourself in.  I will walk through the four group assessments, point out what to look
for to make assessments and then how that information can help you better understand what your own body is saying to other people you come into contact with. This will help you quickly assess what everyone else’s body is saying to you and will offer you clues on how to respond.

Group assessments are made by observing the amount of physical space between two or more people in any setting. There are a couple of things that are important to remember when observing and assessing groups.  The first is that, because we do work with organizations from all over the world, the group relationships that I will outline apply everywhere, but the spatial distances may vary based on cultural and societal norms for the area in which you live.  For example, while traveling in some foreign countries, I have noticed that some cultures interact with others with very little space in between them, while others maintain a significant amount of special distance.

The second thing to remember is Continue reading »

It’s About Community: The Genesis of Beer In Boulder

January 20, 2016 in Veterans, Business, and Security

At the beginning of December I posted an article to Medium titled, “It’s The Age of The Active Shooter and We Can’t Talk About It,” where I presented my ideas about long-term solutions that can get America further and further left of bang. The premise of the article is that strong, close-knit communities offer significant advantages to ensuring our own safety against the risk of mass killings and terrorist attacks at a local level. That article was a shift in many of the concepts that I typically write and teach about, as we primarily focus on the improving an individual’s ability to recognize threats here at The CP Journal. In Left of Bang and in the Tactical Analysis program, there is an implied assumption that, by developing a single person’s ability to identify those with violent intent, the collective community will benefit as a result of a the time spent by that person attaining a level of informed awareness.

However, in my “Age of the Active Shooter” article, the goal was to shift our awareness to a point even earlier on the bang timeline. Whereas behavioral analysis is designed to recognize people who have already made the decision to become violent, strong communities can also prevent some of the conditions that might lead a person to making that decision in the first place, ultimately reducing the number of people that protectors have to identify hiding within the crowd. But there is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. It isn’t enough to simply write about community as the solution; those words only have meaning when we are actively contributing to making it a reality. It is in that pursuit that I’m excited to announce a new project that my fiancé Lisa and I have launched called Beer in Boulder.

The Role of Community

If you were to look at the last decade of my life, it would be pretty clear that “community” wasn’t something I was committed to developing or contributing to. Community has been something that has remained fairly Continue reading »

Help Video #5: How do I ask questions while taking your class online?

January 18, 2016 in Training

Return to Frequently Asked Question

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BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) – Here Are The Most Basic Answers To This Frequently Asked Question

  • Can I ask the instructor a question while going through the online class? Yes.
  • How do I ask those questions? There is a link in every module that lets students ask a question via email.
  • Who will answer the question?
    • If the question is related to the content being taught in the program, the instructor will be the one who personally answers the question.
    • If the question is technical in nature or related to the learning management system platform, a member from our support team will be the one to provide a response.
  • How long will it take to get a response? That answer depends on the depth of the question. Every question will be responded to or acknowledged within 24 hours (on business days). If the question requires a longer/more developed answer than what can be generated in that time, the students will be notified that the instructor needs more time to provide a thorough/complete answer and will be in touch as soon as possible.
  • What happens if the answer provided doesn’t actually answer my question? We keep going until the topic becomes clear and the answer provided has actually solved the problem the student is facing.

Video Transcript
Continue reading »

Thank You and Happy New Year

January 16, 2016 in Updates

With 2016 upon us, we wanted to take a minute to thank everyone that helped make 2015 such an impactful year for us at The CP Journal.  One of our primary goals for 2015 was to get the information that we teach into the hands of people that want it and need it to keep themselves and those around them safer in both their personal and professional lives.  Through our continued reach of this blog, our dedication to in-person training and developments to our online learning platform, we were able to accomplish this goal, but we realize there is still much more to do in our pursuit of eliminating violent acts from occurring.

For everyone that has spent time reading our blog, subscribing to our Weekly Profile via e-mail, spent time learning with us in-person, or trained with us online, thank you for your continued support for the work that we are doing.

2015 was a huge year for us in terms of solidifying important client relationships, making program enhancements, and improving the student experience in our online learning platform.  Based on the continued feedback that we have received from our clients and individual students, some of the goals that we have set for 2016 are centered around our commitment to continue to deliver high quality training to help you better understand human behavior to make more informed decisions, program content enhancements to meet your needs, technology improvements to enhance the online learning experience, and creating more programs that are tailored to the needs of the ever-growing list of industries that continue to look our way to help improve their internal and external operations.

Thank you again to those that have made this progress possible. We look forward to continued great work in the years ahead and, in the shorter term, continuing to work with our dedicated client partners in 2016 to help prevent violence and help people better understand human behavior.

 

Holding Yourself Publicly Accountable For Learning

January 8, 2016 in Learning About Learning

Each year The CP Journal has been in business, we have always established goals for ourselves personally, professionally and for the business. As an education-focused company, the end of the year usually presents a much lighter workload than the year’s earlier months, as most organizations that we’re training don’t try to squeeze seminars into what is already a chaotic December calendar. Over the last four years, I’ve come to truly appreciate that piece of our yearly rhythm, as it provides a natural break in the daily grind to take a step back, assess the previous year and think about the transition into the next.

While I’ve never made those goals public, I’ve come to realize that, if we are going to hold our students accountable to putting in the work to truly learn and integrate behavioral analysis into their lives, they should see that we also practice what we preach. In an age of self-guided education and unstructured lifelong learning, we go through the same process of determining areas and skills we need to master to be true professionals in our field. We design adaptable and personal training programs that we believe will get us to the level of proficiency we are seeking. We go through the same ups and downs that come with learning and do it all while trying to remain motivated and holding ourselves accountable to the standard we set for ourselves.

When it comes to choosing the areas I am pursuing in the coming year for personal development, I always try to consider the two axes (for clarity, this use of axes is the plural of axis, not multiple versions of the tool to chop wood) that go into lifelong learning. There is one skill that I am always looking to go very deep on, and there are a number of skills that I want to develop in order to have a broad scope of knowledge across a range of topics. If you are a fan of Brett McKay’s writing on The Art of Manliness or enjoy frequent Mr. T references, here is a great article that Brett wrote a few years back on being a “t-shaped man,” which encompasses both deep and broad skills. Thinking about development in this way has helped me to ensure that I make progress without becoming a dilettante.

The skill that I continue to focus a great deal of my deep development on is Continue reading »

Communication Exercise: How To Use Real Life Events – Part 2

January 5, 2016 in Applying The Observations

In Part 1 of this article last week, we talked about the behaviors that a mother observed in a real life scenario that helped her get left of bang when faced by a woman attempting to kidnap her baby at a mall in Long Island, NY.  Each of the intuitive observations that the mother made in the situation allowed her to prevent herself from becoming the victim of the crime. Using our terminology, we can further explain why the would-be attacker was an anomaly to the baseline for a woman’s bathroom. But to complete the communication exercise, we also need to further explain why the kidnapper’s behavior actually made her stand out from the baseline.

To do that, we need to take a look at her intent. The kidnapper’s violent intent for being in the bathroom is different than a typical/baseline bathroom goer. To put the observed behaviors in context, let’s start by placing the would-be kidnapper’s actions into the framework of the seven-step attack cycle.  If you are unfamiliar with this cycle, it is a structure Continue reading »

Communication Exercise: How To Use Real Life Events – Part 1

December 26, 2015 in Applying The Observations

“There was just something off about the person. I couldn’t explain it but I just felt like I needed to get out of there.”

The comment above is one that I hear often while teaching or talking to people who have read, Left of Bang. As humans, we are hard-wired to predict danger. This natural ability is one of they many reasons why we need to trust our instincts that stem from the limbic system, which is the survival center of our brain. For example, in early December, there was a story reported by an ABC News affiliate in Long Island, NY, about a mother who had an instinct that another woman was trying to kidnap her baby. Because the mother was able to trust her intuition that there was something “off” about the other woman, she was able to safely get away and prevent herself and her baby from becoming the victims of a crime.

However, recognizing that there is something wrong is often only the first part of the process that people with situational awareness need to go through in order to ensure their own safety. For police officers and security professionals who are going to have to write out a report, there is still the requirement of being able to effectively communicate exactly what you observed. For civilians who need to file a police report or are looking to better understand where that original gut feeling came from, the ability to articulate what you saw and explain why it was important is a critical skill. While it is extremely gratifying that the students who come through the Tactical Analysis program note that they now have the ability to clearly and articulately explain what about a particular situation led them to make a decision, the communication of those intuitive recognitions we rely on takes practice to master.

One method that we use to hone this skill and that we recommend to our course graduates seeking to make behavior analysis a habit is to take real life events and translate the eye witness accounts into the Continue reading »

Why The Submissive Cluster Does Not Come From The Freeze Response

December 15, 2015 in Assessing Individuals

As students go through our Tactical Analysis program, there is a question that often comes up during the portion of the course when we teach how to read and assess the behavior of individual people. The question is usually framed in this manner:

“If the dominant cluster is manifestation of the fight response to a perceived threat or stressor, and if the uncomfortable cluster is the body’s manifestation of the flight response, and if the comfortable cluster represents the absence of the fight or flight response because no threat is perceived, then wouldn’t it make sense that the submissive cluster is the body’s manifestation of the freeze response?”

While this train of though suggesting that the submissive cluster might originate out of the freeze response is certainly logical, the answer to the question is no. The submissive cluster is NOT how the body displays that it is experiencing the freeze response to perceived stressors or threats.

The definition that we use to define what the submissive cluster represents is as follows Continue reading »

It’s the Age of the Active Shooter and We Can’t Talk About It

December 9, 2015 in Veterans, Business, and Security

America is in the middle of what historians will one day call the “Age of the Active Shooter.” Despite empty words from public figures about how shootings have not become the new normal, the increasing frequency of attacks with mass casualties proves otherwise. A couple days after the San Bernandino shooting, NPR ran a story about how companies in the security industry that are providing “active shooter response training” are part of a growth industry. As disturbing as that is, it is unlikely that these attacks will slow down in the near future because Americans cannot even have an honest, intellectual and meaningful conversation about how to stop them from occurring. In response to the attacks that have occurred in the last decade, it has become clear that there are four topics that have the power to effectively derail any conversation about how America can ultimately get left of bang and prevent the next attack or shooting.

We Can’t Talk About Guns

The topic of guns is the first surefire way to immediately end any rational conversation about how to prevent violence. Whether you believe that we should erase firearms from the planet or think that the only way to keep people from being violent is to arm every person in America does not matter. The moment that you bring up either gun control or the 2nd Amendment is the moment when you lose 50% of the people you are talking to. Because the most vocal people in each group are the ones who have already made up their mind on the topic and will never even consider information contradictory to their views, the words used and emotions that present themselves when discussing the topic of guns eliminates any rationality whatsoever. Regardless of which view that you have, we cannot make progress towards stopping an attack when a conversation about the weapons being used to kill hundreds of Americans each year can’t even begin.

The real reason why my opinion and your opinion on guns are irrelevant to furthering the conversation about violence prevention is because the actions our country has taken in the last decade show that gun control is unacceptable to Americans. If there was going to be any event that made people find some common ground and move away from one of the two extremes on the issue of guns, it would have been the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 when 20 children were killed. While there were Executive Orders made about gun control after this Newtown shooting, no gun control legislation was passed by the people elected to represent all Americans. If the lives of 20 children are considered “the cost of living in a free society,” whether you like or agree with that statement or not, it seems that Americans has already made their decision. Bringing up your opinion on the role guns play in violence is only going to end the conversation because it is a debate that will not make progress towards finding a way out of this dark period.

We Can’t Talk About Religion

The second foolproof way to eliminate any pursuit of common ground or consensus when talking about preventing violence is to bring up the topic of religion. Continue reading »