Patrick Van Horne is the co-author of Left of Bang and co-founder of the The CP Journal, where he continues to develop and apply the behavioral detection principles that emerged from the Marine Corps Combat Hunter program. His work has expanded from individual threat recognition to organizational readiness and executive-level capability development.
In this conversation, Patrick and I work through three layers of the Left of Bang framework: the individual observer, the organizational system, and the strategic level, where preparedness efforts can easily stall out. We even talk about where his framework can fail, how trauma can affect your application of it, and all sorts of fascinating things.
What We Cover:
The most common failure mode at the individual level is lack of confidence in the system, specifically, the failure to act on three solid indicators and the costly search for certainty that doesn’t exist left of bang.
Why trauma and past experience with violence can produce sharper observers, and also produce distortion, and how baseline discipline is the corrective for both.
The role of shared vocabulary in organizational performance. When the person who recognizes a threat and the person who can authorize action don’t share a language, the detection cycle breaks regardless of individual skill level.
How Van Horne completely reworked the course after losing a room of elementary school teachers, and what that failure revealed about the difference between content accuracy and audience orientation.
Why organizations systematically underinvest in left-of-bang capability, and why that choice is politically safer for leadership even when it isn’t safer for the people the organization is supposed to protect.
The three levels of Left of Bang as Van Horne now teaches it: individual, operational, and strategic, and why the executive layer is where the work is now.
Patrick’s work, as well as comprehensive training and additional research, can be found at The CP Journal.
This is the final episode of Change the Game Season 1. The season opened with the question of what it takes to operate effectively in contested, high-stakes environments. It ends here, with a conversation about what happens when the system works, where it breaks, and what it costs when organizations wait for failure to prove the need. Season 2 is coming. Subscribe now so you don’t miss it!
