The Power of Preparation: Winning Before the Crisis Even Starts

When people see someone successfully navigate a crisis, they often assume they’re witnessing bravery, quick thinking, or an extraordinary ability to perform under pressure. From my experience, about 90% of what looks like bravery in the moment is a combination of experience and preparation. I learned this firsthand when I was tasked with helping evacuate foreign nationals from Benghazi and Tripoli during the Libyan Civil War. From the outside, a successful evacuation might look like courage under extreme circumstances. The reality was more methodical.

We had prepared. We arranged safe houses. We conducted route reconnaissance. We built Plans B and C, and we knew how and when to move from one plan to another without panicking. I wasn’t problem-solving under fire. I was executing the plan.

That lesson has stayed with me throughout my career, and it applies just as powerfully in business. Companies rarely navigate a crisis successfully because their leaders suddenly develop superhuman abilities. They succeed because they invested in preparation long before the crisis was ever on the horizon.

The Best Leaders Don’t Think Faster During a Crisis

One of the biggest misconceptions about leadership is that great leaders thrive because they’re naturally calm under pressure. I see it differently: pressure doesn’t create ability; it exposes it. When uncertainty strikes, we don’t suddenly develop better judgment; typically, the opposite happens. Stress narrows our thinking. Decision-making becomes reactive. Creativity diminishes, and we fall back on the habits, training, and experience we already have.

That’s why experienced leaders often seem composed while everyone else is scrambling. They’ve wrestled with the hard questions before they needed answers. I think about confidence the same way. It isn’t something you magically summon when things go wrong. Confidence is preparation you can feel. It comes from considering what might go wrong, discussing difficult scenarios with your team, identifying alternative routes, and removing as many unknowns as possible. When the unexpected happens, you aren’t starting from scratch.

Preparation Makes Extraordinary Performance Look Ordinary

I saw this same principle play out during a completely different challenge: setting the world record for cycling the Pan-American Highway from Argentina to Alaska. When people hear about a 14,000-mile journey completed in under 100 days, they understandably focus on endurance and determination. But the reality was less glamorous than it sounded. Long before my first pedal stroke, my wife, Alana, and I spent nearly 18 months planning every major variable we could control — visas, border crossings, support vehicles, nutrition, equipment specifications, and contingency plans for the hardest sections of the route. We also prepared for what couldn’t be mapped on paper. I trained to understand how my body would respond to cycling ten or twelve hours a day through deserts, mountains, and high-altitude environments. Just as important, I prepared mentally.

If I had imagined riding 14,000 miles every morning, it might have seemed like too much to handle. So, I took it step by step: starting with the country, then focusing on each day, and finally breaking it down into stages. Before I knew it, my world was just four two-hour rides. What once felt like an almost impossible goal turned into a series of manageable milestones. That experience reminded me of something I’ve learned before in even more high-stakes situations: being well-prepared truly makes big challenges feel much smaller.

Why Businesses Struggle to Invest in Preparation

If preparation is so valuable, why do so many organizations struggle to invest in it?

Part of the problem is that preparation creates an unusual return on investment: the cost is easy to see, while the value often remains invisible. A company can calculate exactly what it spends on contingency planning, training, simulations, operational reviews, or redundant systems. What is much harder to quantify is the disruption that never became a crisis, the costly mistake that was avoided, or the downtime that never occurred because those investments were made. Success, in this case, often looks like nothing happening at all.

That makes preparation a hard sell when budgets are tight. Readiness competes with initiatives that promise more immediate and measurable results, so it can be tempting to defer planning, training, or additional capacity until the need is clearer. The problem is that by the time the need becomes obvious, the organization is already reacting, and reacting is almost always more expensive than preparing.

In a reactive environment, decisions have to be made quickly and with incomplete information. Resources are harder and more expensive to secure, teams work longer hours, and leaders spend valuable time addressing problems that could have been anticipated months earlier. Over time, the cost extends beyond the immediate disruption. Employees become exhausted from operating in a constant state of urgency, and leaders have less capacity to focus on the work that moves the business forward.

Preparation changes the dynamic because it doesn’t just reduce risk; it creates speed. When disruption occurs, prepared organizations have already considered the possibilities, clarified responsibilities, and established potential courses of action. Instead of spending the first critical hours or days trying to determine what to do, they can begin executing. While competitors are still assessing the situation, prepared teams are already moving through it.

Stop Trying to Predict the Future

Another mistake I see organizations make is assuming preparation requires predicting every possible crisis. It doesn’t. I’ve always found it more useful to prepare for categories of disruption rather than trying to forecast the exact event.

The exact cause matters far less than your organization’s ability to respond. This philosophy shaped how I approached operations throughout my career. We built contingency plans for likely failures. If communications were lost, we already had a response. If circumstances changed unexpectedly, we weren’t inventing a solution under pressure; we moved to the next plan. That distinction matters.

Adaptability Begins Long Before Change Happens

Some leaders worry that detailed planning creates rigid organizations. I believe the opposite is true: the best plans create flexibility because they’re built with change in mind. During my cycling expedition, I had to adjust the schedule several times as unexpected events altered the original plan. Those changes didn’t derail the mission because the objective remained clear even as the route to reach it changed.

The same principle applies within an organization. I don’t want teams merely memorizing procedures; I want them to understand the purpose behind them. When people understand the objective, not just the instructions, they can make sound decisions when circumstances force a change to the original plan. That’s real adaptability.

Build a Culture That Rewards Readiness

Preparation shouldn’t live inside a binder that only gets opened during an emergency. It should be part of how an organization operates every day, and that starts with leadership. Too many organizations celebrate the person who saves the day while overlooking the person whose planning prevented the emergency altogether. We should reverse those priorities: reward prevention, recognize foresight, make preparedness visible, and create opportunities to learn before the stakes are high.

During those conversations, titles should be set aside. The most junior employee in the room should be able to challenge the most senior executive, provided they can support their reasoning. That’s how organizations continuously improve rather than repeat the same mistakes.

Winning Starts Before the Crisis Does

If a CEO gave me one day to improve their organization’s readiness, I wouldn’t start by rewriting every process or producing a hundred-page crisis plan. I’d start with one question: what would genuinely harm the business if it failed today? Maybe it’s a supplier with no backup. Maybe it’s a system everyone depends on. Maybe it’s an employee who holds critical knowledge no one else has. Maybe it’s a decision that can’t be made if one executive is unavailable.

Those are the vulnerabilities I’d address first. From there, preparedness needs to become an ongoing discipline: stress-test assumptions whenever the business changes, revisit contingency plans, build redundancy where it matters, and cultivate habits that foster learning rather than complacency.

Preparation rarely attracts attention, because when it’s done well, nothing dramatic happens. Winning before the crisis starts looks boring. It’s the drill no one thinks they need. It’s the backup plan everyone hopes they’ll never use. It’s the difficult conversation that happens while there’s still time to have it. The crisis is just the exam. Winning comes from everything you did during the months of study nobody saw. You don’t rise to the moment. Your preparation delivers you to it.

The information provided is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, recommendations, or solicitation. Solyco Capital and/or its affiliates may have financial interests in companies discussed herein, which creates potential conflicts of interest. The views expressed are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect official positions of Solyco Capital. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. Readers should conduct independent research and consult their own attorneys, accountants, and other professional advisors before making any investment decisions. The content herein should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to engage in any investment strategy, purchase of securities, or other transaction. All information is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind, express or implied.

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